Looking Forward. By Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel 4.
Participatory Consumption
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I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree, Indeed,
unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. -Ogden Nash Song of the Open Road |
The Participatory Case
In
participatory Martin Luther King County (MLK), all citizens belong to their
neighborhood council, their ward council, and the MLK council. With this structure,
not all ward or county council members need to attend all ward or county
council meetings. Sometimes, for really important issues, decisions are made
by a referendum of all members. Other times, only representatives sent by
neighborhood councils to ward councils or ward councils to county councils
vote. Meetings are always open and for important issues they are televised
before referenda. In addition, one county workplace is the Collective
Consumption Facilitation Board (CCFB), which is empowered to facilitate
decision making regarding county collective consumption. The CCFB is governed
by the same participatory rules as any other workplace. Each neighborhood and
ward council has its own smaller CCFB to facilitate their collective
consumption decisions, and the same holds for cities, states, and regions. So there is
the "level" of each individual, the "level" of the
neighborhood, the "level" of the ward, and the "level" of
the county. To fully understand collective consumption requires relating it
to the planning of all economic decisions which we discuss later. Here,
however, we can describe relevant local institutions and the logic of some of
their procedures. MLK county
determines short- and long-term collective consumption priorities and plans.
It chooses between projects like new athletic complexes, cultural centers,
hospitals, schools, bus systems, or no new construction at all. The county
council makes decisions by referendum of the whole council on a variety of
proposed project menus. Competing collective consumption alternatives arise
out of communications between the CCFB and county council representatives
from neighborhood councils. The CCFB has data about prior years' plans as
well as projects that were not approved last year. A first set of options
includes a continuation of plans in progress, a listing of other plans
previously desired but delayed, and a list of proposals for possible new
collective consumption projects received by the CCFB from neighborhood
councils, individuals, and workplaces during the year. Planning
procedures (discussed in the next two chapters) then refine these many
possibilities into more precise options so that choices can be made by a
county referendum. Although additional participation by citizens requires
more of their time go to managing collective consumption, they spend less
time influencing these collective participatory plans than they previously
spent compensating for the lack of social services induced by
profit-motivated market decisions. Once the
county's collective consumption decisions are determined, ward and
neighborhood councils consider issues such as improving collective day care
facilities, scheduling food delivery, reseeding parks, changing pool
schedules, building a new movie complex, and enlarging the local library.
Neighborhood CCFBs facilitate such decisions by listing options and
enumerating their likely effects. Instead of the whole county participating,
only members of the affected ward or neighborhood cast "ballots,"
though ultimately each neighborhood's plan is summed into the plan for the
whole county, and then summed into the plan for the whole society. The
difference between capitalist Jefferson Park County and participatory Martin
Luther King County should be clear. In the capitalist case, collective
consumption succumbs to the will of government bureaucracy and powerful
private interests. Definition of options and their refinement into final
choices rests with "professionals" subject to pressure by private
lobbies. Most citizens are estranged from decisions, which accommodate only
the wills of powerful elites motivated by a desire to maximize only their own
profits and status. In Martin
Luther King County, individuals, neighborhoods, and interest groups submit
ideas for collective consumption projects. Workers serving on the CCFB refine
these options into coherent possibilities whose effects can be compared.
Their workplaces are structured so that CCFB workers have no vested interests
to advance, and in any event final collective consumption is debated by
everyone who wishes to participate and final decisions are made by democratic
votes sensitive to the different effects decisions may have on different
constituencies. |
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