Re: Imagine and then Act

Hi Anders,

Our experiences are pretty similar, though not exactly. So perhaps I can briefly note some differences - and also provide some reactions to the situations you encounter.

On the left, of course workers and consumers councils is simplest to get across, as you note, and least controversial. Things complicate a bit when you add the label "self managing" however - and of course that is the heart of it - but still, resistance is modest. I happen to think that just wanting this one feature implies all the rest, which means if I am right that actually people assenting to self managed workers and consumers councils often aren't really thinking through this feature and accepting it, they are just seeing a very modest part of its meaning, and accepting that.
 
Regarding remuneration, that people have concerns about assessing duration, intensity, or onerousness of work is natural, but the answer is that there is no single answer. This, like almost everything in a complex society, is a matter of self managed agreement. I work in one place, and we have one set of procedures and a degree of detail we seek, etc., but, working in another place, you may have a different approach. In fact, such differences may be part of why we apply to one place to work, instead of to another. The key point is in self managed workplaces procedures are arrived at to the satisfaction of the workers - and due to the context of participatory planning, they are consistent with the norms of society as well.

You write, still regarding remuneration, 'if equal pay per hour is taken as an approximation of this institution there is an acceptance in principle for this institution as well." Honestly, why would a serious person who would be happy with everyone getting an identical rate of pay per hour worked, not be happy with a formulation that said that is the base, and it already includes duration, but then workers can decide that someone is working above average intensity, and that it is socially desirable, and so deserves extra - or that someone wants to work less hard, and take less - or that someone is doing some particularly onerous work, for whatever reasons, and deserves more. It is hard for me to think that anyone would think that would yield less just, less equitable, outcomes, then simply enforcing equal hourly pay regardless of conditions or intensity, and thus even for someone who is barely exerting at all. In any event, with parecon's norm, there is equal pay per hour for two people doing different work if both are doing socially valued work, and the onerousness of their overall conditions is roughly the same, as well as the intensity.

On the same issue, you write, "When the discussion goes into how to grade effort and sacrifice in a more detailed manner there are some concerns." But of course, and the more so if one wants a very fine grain payment scale, though the less so if one is satisfied with just a few tiers. But in any event, all we need to do to advocate the overall approach is to understand various plausible ways of accessing quite well - and later, others will choose, for themselves, their way in their workplace.

I would prefer to work in a place with just a few intensity rates - say way above average, above average, average, below average, and way below average. By far more people will be average than anything else - very few will reside often at the extremes, and probably only by advance agreement. And so on. Really, it is possible, indeed rather easy, to come up with all kinds of detailed issues. Someone comes to work, but their intensity is down, measured by their achievement - then again, the person's spouse is ill, or something. So, okay, the workforce says there is no need for a rate reduction. Someone else is fine and dandy, not working very hard, instead talking on the phone a whole lot - there will likely be a different view of that.

You write, "There is a hesitation to grading ones coworker but I think there are ways to deal with this in a way that will win acceptance. I do think it will be necessary to minimize the subjective grading by individuals of their coworkers and instead trying to establish and select within the councils measurable statistical figures acceptable to the council that will form the ground for grades for each individual." I don't really understand the word grade, here. We are simply assessing how intensely people are exerting. Are they putting out, or jacking off - as the saying goes. The initial assessment in a large workplace is likely to be a task, perhaps done by a team, using evidence of output and interviews, etc. Whatever people find acceptable...

In essence, a workplace warrents some level of income for its workforce - as in so many hours of average intensity labor to produce its output. If the workforce then decides to apportion that warranted claim on social product one way or another, so be it.

For example, a workplace could make a task for some workers (who also have a balanced job complex, etc.) making assessments of intensity  that are brought before the council if challenged sufficiently, or whatever. The rule in one place could be that duration is a function of clockin and clockout - and intensity is measured by output, while onerousness is agreed before the fact, for jobs that really do vary greatly - though that is not very likely given balanced job complexes. Then, if someone was getting high income for high output or low income for low output but the output wasn't actually a function of intensity, the assessment would be challenged... And so on.

It is important also to realize we are talking about very modest variations in overall income per worker, clearly. You can only work so much longer or less long than other workers, and that only by collective agreement, in any event. And you can only work so much harder or less hard, again, and often that also only by collective agreement before hand (if you work in a team or something one person can't work all night and leave everyone else no supplies for the next day...)
 
Moving on to the third key institution of parecon, balanced job complexes is not job rotation. The latter can have benefits, especially in small workplaces, or it can cause problems, particularly when done mechanically or in a disruptive fashion, etc. The former, by contrast, is essential to avoid class division and class rule. When people start to wonder about this aspect of parecon - and the others too, for that matter - I always wonder, well, do they have the same energy and passion for noticing the unimaginably more obvious, larger, (and in my opinion real and highly documented) systematic faults of the systems they abide or even advocate?

When you say, "The acceptance of hierarchical job division in practice is surprisingly high even within organizations that subscribe to a different outlook in principle." Of course - that is our history, our habit, and at some deep level, often our implicit belief. But there is another layer to it. Left history ratifies and makes almost essential as a badge of membership talking about income justice and about some kind of democracy - but it says virtually nothing bearing on division of labor.

If you try to rotate tasks - which I do not propose as something necessary or essential to do - or if you try to have each person have a stable set of responsibilities which, however, are balanced for empowerment, and people are not prepared to do the tasks they are responsible for, of course it is a recipe for disaster. How could it not be? But to think that is a weakness of balanced job complexes honestly makes no more sense than to say that having doctors as we have them now, without their having to clean bed pans, etc., will fail if the people in the positions haven't trained to be successful medical doctors. Lack of ability or training leading to lack of effective activity is only a sensible worry, however, if there is an assumption that some people are incapable of gaining enough training to be doing enough empowering tasks for their overall job complex to be balanced. That is clearly false, however, save for cases of mental impairment.

You note that "The institution of balanced job complexes is for many people a new concept and therefore it will take more effort to explain and promote this institution. Balanced job complexes are often confused with job rotation without distinction. To the extent that the concept is correctly understood there are concerns about who will grade the different tasks for empowerment and if it is even possible to do so fairly." And my answer is familiar - the workers in the workers council in the industry or firm will do it, agreeing on methods, etc. And this may vary in different situations. If one looks at that and says it can't be done perfectly, of course that is correct. But why would that be a concern, in any event?

I will be honest here. There is a part of me, when I read over more complete descriptions of parecon, that wonders, how can people raise the objections they raise to you and to me, unless they rebut the extensive discussions of just those objections that appear in those descriptions - which they never do. Of course the answer is that the people raising objections have rarely read more extensive discussions, or thought about them. Most often, they partially hear a very very partial description - and then leap to reject or doubt some most likely misspecified part without seriously considering it. That is my experience, at any rate. It always disturbs me. It seems like the mood ought to be, instead, jeeez, I sure do hope this vision is worthy and viable - I will look hard to see if it is, rather than jump on any phrase I can find to quickly interpret it in some inflexible and mechanical way and then reject it. I think that change of mood - from hoping to reject and doing it pretty reflexively, to hoping to like and taking time and care - still being critical, but now thoughtful - will come, however, only with a considerable increase in momentum for the vision.

You note that "Allocation through participatory planning is the institution of the Parecon model that in my experience is most difficult to get people to accept. The belief in the market as means to allocation is very strong even among the organizations on the left and the only thinkable alternative is always central planning."

This was actually the biggest thing, perhaps, that I never anticipated in offering parecon. There is a sense in which rejecting markets ought to be trivial for people, it seems to me. I mean they are so obviously oriented to anti human dynamics and results - it is very hard to understand, at least for me, why people on the left, why people concerned about people - much less ecology - wouldn't immediately see market competition for allocation as a prime candidate for replacement...

When people say "The objections to the participatory planning model are mostly that it will be too costly in terms of time and effort to implement and run" I am similarly dumb founded, honestly. It replaces a system which not only routinely generates crises - as now, but one which at its very best is systematically violating pretty much every leftist value anyone might hold, and very greatly, not just a little. I agree with your assessment that "Even if most people agree with the problems of the market as means of allocation identified in claim 6 it is really difficult for many people to accept participatory planning as a real alternative" but I honestly wonder why. They have no basis that I am aware of, without some serious thought, to even have an opinion about participatory planning, so I suspect more often than not it is an example of what was noted earlier.  But I totally agree we need to make the model as a whole, and in particular participatory planning, "more accessible and of getting the model discussed in wider circles, through seminars and so on."
 
Your view that "all of this means that the focus of the efforts for promoting Parecon, at least in Sweden, should be on increasing the understanding of balanced job complexes and participatory planning" rings true for me for elsewhere, as well.
 

 

your experience is similar to my own. i've been defending the participatory economics model since the mid-'90s, mainly among anarchists and syndicalists in the USA. like you, I've found that workers' councils and workers' self-management is not really a problem...this is already central to libertarian Left politics. The only caveat I'd add is that nowadays some (but not all) anarchists and syndicaliists prefer to talk about "workers assemblies" rather than the elected bodies, the councils. this is because of the way that grassroots delegate bodies, like shop stewards, have tended to become integrated into bureaucratic unionism since World War 2.

in regard to "consumer councils" I find that this term can be confused by some people with the idea of the consumers of a particular product or company organizing. to explain this to anarchists, I've tended to re-phrase it in language more familiar to anarchists. So I talk about the neighborhood assemblies -- and "free municipalities" of the Spanish anarchists which influenced Murray Bookchin's "libertarian municipalism". These bodies are often understood by anarchists as political governance bodies or forms of popular power. But they can also be understood as having an additional role in developing proposals for public goods consumption, ala participatory economics.

I also don't have much problem getting anarchists to understand "balanced jobs", tho here again I have tended to re-phrase it as "re-integrating conceptual and decision-making tasks with the doing of the work, so that there is no longer a hierarchical division of labor." Thus understood most anarchists I talk to agree with the idea. I don't really get opposition to this.

In my experience the most controversial idea is "remunderation for effort and sacrifice." That's because many anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists have been influenced by interpretations of anarcho-communism in terms of abolition of money and the communist principle "from each according to ability, to each according to need." thus there are many who reject any idea of people working to obtain pay.

like you, i tend to defend this idea as a proposal for an equal rate of pay. there are quite a few anarchists and syndicalists who agree with this, but in the USA there isn't a consensus one way or the other as between equal pay versus the communist idea of "free sharing." some anarcho-communists in the USA have a sufficiently loose understanding of "communism" that they consider participatory planning and remuneration of the able bodied on an equal basis as just specifications of libertarian communism. in other words, some accept that an internal social accounting system is needed  that can evaluate costs and benefits.

to the extent participatory planning is opposed by anarchists and syndicalists here, it is because people subscribe to the vision of a decentralized system of local assemblies where there is a unitary planning process, not the separation into negotiation between producers and consumers. this is based on what is, in my opinion, the misguided idea that grassroots central planning's difficulties can be overcome if it's highly decentralized....this being a traditional anarchist response to state socialist central planning.