What's a Socialist to Do?
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Ehrenreich & Fletcher tell socialists to go and organize. "We have to build organizations, including explicitly socialist ones, that can mobilize this talent, develop leadership and advance local struggles."[1] Generations of eloquent and courageous men and women have followed that advice and we have very little to show for that effort. Telling socialists to organize is a counsel of despair because 150 years of organizing the working class has brought us no closer to socialism.. Is there anything else socialists can do?
"Don't mourn, organize!" is backed by an elaborate theory of how socialism will overcome capitalism. Socialism consists of the public ownership of the means of production. Socialization of productive resources remains impossible as long as the capitalists are the most powerful class in the society. As the German Social Democratic Party more than a hundred years ago announced: "The working class cannot develop its economic organization and wage its economic battles without political rights. It cannot accomplish the transfer of the means of production to the community as a whole without first having come into possession of political power." [2] In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels referred to this struggle as "winning the battle of democracy." [3] In the traditional Marxist view of history class conflict unceasingly agitates capitalist societies. The capitalist ruling and the working class are each trying to enhance their own power in a zero sum game where one party gains power only at the expense of the opponent. On the road to socialism, the working class needs to gain greater power than the capitalists. The goal of the socialist movement is power for the working class.
Now it is, of course, true, that capitalist economies are constantly disturbed by a struggle between workers and employers over wages and working conditions—clearly a power struggle. The employers seek the power forcibly to impose lower wages, longer workdays, worse conditions on the workers. The workers, in their turn, resist those pressures and seek to enhance their own power to improve their situation. [4] But these are struggles between wage workers and the owners of capital. As Branko Horvat has argued, they are struggles within capitalism and not about capitalism. [5] Witness the willingness of workers to make wage concessions when hard times threaten their jobs. Labor unions in the US have frequently been downright hostile to socialism; in Europe before World War I they were always dragging their feet when the Social-Democratic party advocated measures to advance socialism, because they were not only fighting capitalists but also dependent on them. They needed to succeed in short term campaigns in order to retain the loyalty of their members. They needed to maintain good relations with the employers in order to be able to negotiate wages and working conditions. [6] It is a mistake to confuse that power struggle within capitalism with a struggle for socialism.
The struggle on the factory floor is not a struggle for socialism. Socialism is not won by winning power over the capitalists within capitalism. "Socialism" is, primarily, the name for alternatives to capitalism--a social and economic order free of the glaring defects of capitalism. Indeed, it is clear today, that "socialism" is an extremely elastic term. Some very general traits of socialism are widely accepted such as the democratic control of investment capital by all citizens, or the abolition of labor markets. Under socialism, labor ceases to be a commodity (although not all socialists agree with that). But side by side with these, very general, economic ideas the term "socialism" refers to a range of other expectations (goals, hopes, ideals?) for a society after the end of capitalism. Socialism can refer either to a number of more or less carefully defined economic projects but also to a collection of fairly ill defined ideas about an alternative society and the changes needed to approximate such a good society.
Among the economic projects are, on the one hand, Market Socialism (often also called "Economic Democracy") and, on the other, Democratic Planning. Under Market Socialism all workplaces are owned and run by the workers thereby ending the commodification of labor. Capital, no longer privately owned, is distributed by local branches of a government investment bank according to investment priorities set by the people at large (or, for instance, in the United States by Congress). [7]
Democratic Planning also envisages worker owned and managed workplaces but is, in addition, deeply imbued with worries about the social effects of markets. Instead of using markets in order to allocate resources and plan production, it develops a complicated system of planning for production and consumption that begins in local, neighborhood assemblies to rise up to city wide, county wide, regional, and national levels. In addition, side by side with the controversy over markets, the Democratic Planning project insists that everyone is entitled to some interesting work. That can only be accomplished if everyone also does a part of the large body of uninteresting work that needs doing in any society. Democratic Planning therefore also provides for complex work assignments that assure everyone some stimulating work. [8]
A third version of socialism envisages an economy of profit maximizing firms whose financing comes from special investment banks. Stock in these banks, however, is not bought and sold in currency but in special coupons. At birth every citizen receives a certain quantity of these and is entitled to a portion of the bank's profits. These provisions aim at abolishing a small ruling class that owns the financial resources of the society. "The coupon system is a mechanism for getting people a share of the economy's total profits during their lifetimes." [9] Vouchers cannot be inherited.
Socialists oppose capitalism because it exploits workers, because it spreads alienation, because it is unjust. Philipe van Parijs suggests that we remedy those three failings of a capitalist system by giving every resident of the country a minimum income. That will make it possible to choose between an undesirable job and staying home or going to the beach. Persons now have a choice whether to accept alienating work or not. It will encourage greater inventiveness because, being assured the basic necessities, entrepreneurs take smaller risks with innovative projects. This universal basic income is not usually called "socialism" but its effects may well be like those of the transfer of control of productive resources to all members of the society. [10]
The authors of these different economic schemes are explicit about their goals. Worker controlled businesses put an end to the commodification of labor. Wage labor is no longer a commodity if everyone is not only a worker but also an owner. When investment capital is distributed by the government, and investment priorities are democratically decided by all, the capitalist ruling class disappears from society. The power to direct the economy passes from a small ruling class of capitalists to the entire electorate. Distributing a share of the nation's investment capital to every citizen aims at a society which enables the full development of all members. That is also the goal of the fairly complex work assignment policy suggested by Democratic Planning where everyone is obligated to do some boring work for the sake of being able to also do interesting work. Universal Basic Incomes frees workers from the threat of starvation which employers use against them to get them to accept undesirable work. Wage labor is not abolished but exploitation reduced.
Socialism as an economic project takes rather different forms in these discussions. The goals served by these projected economic arrangements also are not agreed upon by all. There is widespread, but not universal, agreement that investment capital should be controlled by all. It is less clear that all theorists agree about the mechanisms to control investment capital. Not all theorists want to banish labor markets [11] although some regard this as essential to socialism. Individual development is often mentioned as an important socialist goal but not all theorists have developed elaborate schemes for distributing interesting work to everyone. More importantly, these economic arrangements are only partial outlines of socialism—and at least some of the authors discussed are fully aware of that. [12] There are a number of other socialist goals which Market Socialism, or Democratic Planning or a system of vouchers for ownership of the national investment bank not only cannot accomplish alone but the economic proposals are likely to function as expected only if some of the other socialist goals have already been reached.
These following traits are often ascribed to socialism: socialism will create community in contrast to capitalism which fosters extreme individualism. [13] Closely related to this socialist community is the hope that a socialist society will be pervaded by an ethic of solidarity. In a capitalist society, the economic system encourages selfishness. Socialists are animated by sentiments of solidarity; they are prepared to take the needs of their fellow citizens as seriously as their own. [14] In existing societies, people often stand by while their fellows are harmed by private or government violence or the savagery of the capitalist market. In a socialist society, we hope, solidarity will inspire men and women to assist their fellows in need. [15] More generally, many writers deplore the profound moral corruption of existing capitalist societies. The economic system that compels each of us to put our own interests above those of others, or of the community as a whole, makes it excessively difficult to resist the temptation to advance our private advancement by corrupt means. Socialism removes those temptation to a significant extent. [16] In addition, work, in a fully developed socialist society should no longer be drudgery; we look forward to a society where "work is play." [17] Alienation pervades capitalist society in many forms. In one of these forms, alienation deprives most men and women of the free space in which to be as creative and imaginative as they could be under better conditions. To extend that space for creativity to everyone is one more goal of socialism. [18] Finally, extensive liberty and justice are thought to be defining characteristics of socialist societies. [19]
"Socialism" refers to a range of mainly economic projects, some developed in more detail that others, as well as to extremely general, barely articulate hopes, expectations, wishes and ideals. Some authors of economic socialist projects, I suspect, believe that these ideals, mentioned briefly in the previous paragraph, will be realized more or less automatically once labor markets have been abolished and/or investment capital is being distributed according to the wishes of all citizens. But it is clear that the opposite is true: the abolition of the labor market, economic planning in popular assemblies or by means of a limited and carefully supervised market will replicate many forms of capitalist corruption unless citizens have already distanced themselves from capitalist individualism and have adopted an ethic of solidarity. For instance, unless there has been some move towards a pervasive ethics of solidarity, the competition between worker owned firms in Market Socialism may well turn out to be as destructive as the competition between capitalist firms today. We have no reason to assume that worker owned enterprise would be less hungry for their competitors and ready to swallow them up than existing capitalist monopolies. What will keep the markets in Market Socialism free from oligopolistic practices? Under capitalist governments, anti-trust regulation is firmly in the hands of the capitalists; oligopoly grows apace. Will government anti-trust actions be any less corrupt than they are in the US today? Surely not unless the players in the socialist market are more public spirited than our capitalist masters.
There is no space to discuss this matter fully. David Schweickart believes that the goal of firms in economic democracy is to increase the profit per worker/owner while, under capitalism the firm's goal is to increase the profit of the owners. Capitalist firms, therefore, want to grow—growth allows more or less the same number of owners to exploit more workers. The firm in economic democracy does not increase the profit per worker/owner when it grows because total profit is divided among more worker/owners. For this reason expansion is in the interest of capitalist owners, but not of the worker owners in a a socialist society. Firms under economic democracy, he thinks, will be less competitive with one another. The market place will be less Hobbesian than it is under capitalism. But even Schweickart admits that "it is theoretically possible for a majority of workers to vote to lay off some of their colleagues and to replace a minority of higher-paid workers with lower paid ones but the natural solidarity engendered by democracy sharply mitigates against such behavior." (My italics) [20] All instances of large cooperatives—Mondragon, the plywood co-ops of the Northwest in the US, the co-ops in Northern Italy, the kibbutzim—have hired wage labor: workers who were not owners and who earned less than the worker owners. Economic forces alone will not make the democratic economy beneficial for all; moral changes must precede the institution of socialism.
Similarly, we must be prepared to find that the Democratic Planning process is as tainted as the distribution of tax money by elected officials in the US or Britain to-day, unless the society is more of a community than ours. If socialist human beings are at all like us—as Lenin [21] and John Roemer [22] insist they would be—the distribution of investment funds would be as corrupt as the current distribution of bailout funds to large banks and industrial enterprises. By themselves, the economic socialism projects do not promise to usher in a better world. Unless socialist citizens are not as greedy and self-interested as we are today, the distribution of public moneys may well look very much like the massive disbursement of public funds to the major financial institutions that we are witnessing today.
One task of socialists is to establish new institutions. An economy where all enterprises are owned and controlled by its workers needs to be organized. A nationwide system of economic planning requires setting up the requisite organizations and administrative bodies to run this planning process. National investment banks need to be founded. But at the same time establishing some or all of these institutions is not sufficient for establishing the good society we work and hope for; we ourselves need to change. Founding these new and different institutions requires profound transformations of the persons who will originate and maintain these new institutions. Socialism requires not only new institutions, but new women and men.
The changes in human nature demanded by socialism have been debated at least beginning with Wilhelm Reich's call for a "thorough and extensive analysis for the reasons for the continual failure of the workers' movement." [23] Most commonly theorists have ascribed this failure to the "false consciousness" of the workers [24] and have interpreted that false consciousness as false beliefs about the workers' situation and their interests. Marcuse provided a more sophisticated understanding of false consciousness. Capitalism has distorted peoples' sense of what they need. Men and women in capitalist society have mistaken ideas of what they need for a good life, of what is truly valuable in human existence. These are not intellectual mistakes; human desires are misguided, human emotions and attitudes self-destructive.
Reich's vocabulary is very different from Marcuse's but their ideas are similar. Reich, too, looks for the causes of political failure in the emotional life of the German workers. German society was sexually repressed. Sexual needs went unmet and sexual desires were censored and heavily invested with guilt. "The result is conservatism, fear of freedom, in a word reactionary thinking." [25] Capitalism was not holding us back by distorting all needs, as Marcuse thought, but by suppressing specifically sexual needs. Both thinkers assume implicitly what Gibson-Graham insists on explicitly, that our thinking is anchored in our emotions, in personality or, if you will, in the language of Wilhelm Reich, "character structure."[26]
Some necessary changes in human personality or "character structure" are suggested by action research Gibson-Graham did with the inhabitants of a one-industry area in Australia after the industry had moved away. The prevailing feeling was one of despair. People felt victimized but, Gibson-Graham found, they were invested in their victimhood and unwilling or unable to surrender it. Before they could rouse themselves to any sort of action, their personalities had to change. No longer clinging to their self-image as victims, they could take a more hopeful view of their possibilities and their capacities—individually and as a group. [27]
The human changes needed for a socialist society go far beyond changes in morality. Men and women need to change their sense of themselves as well as their sense of what is "natural" and "what makes sense." For most Americans, socialism is not a project they can take seriously. Capitalism is, for them, "natural." It describes how the world is, how human beings are. A society based on principles of solidarity is perhaps a pretty dream, but no more. But, of course, what seems "natural" to people can and does change. We just don't know much about how such changes take place. [28] Before we can bring about fundamental social and political change, peoples' sense of what is natural, what is real, or at least really possible and what a mere chimera must change.
We have seen at least four personality changes suggested as paths to a different and better world. According to Reich the suppression of sexual needs is central; Marcuse speaks of desires in general for what makes life good. Gibson-Graham point to another crucial aspect of the personality: the capacity of human beings for hope. She also draws attention to differences in humans' understanding of what the real world will allow, whether socialist solidarity is something we can reasonably hope and work for or whether it inescapably conflicts with human nature. These hypotheses may point in the right direction; they also make clear that the topic requires much more detailed attention. One may agree that socialism will requires changes in human nature but that is just the beginning. We need to discover what sorts of changes will be needed. [29]
Naomi Scheman also takes up the question of how persons undergo fundamental changes. She inquires into the experience of a woman who, in the course of participating in a conscious raising group, finds herself very angry at her father, brothers, husband and other specific men, and against the institutions of patriarchy, in general. She had not felt that anger before; in discovering it she undergoes a significant change. Anger against men and against patriarchy is now acceptable where it was strictly prohibited before. This new found anger is possible because her idea of the good life changes from being a good housewife and mother and a man's help meet to being in charge of her own life. In becoming angry, she changes and acquires a sense of new possibilities, of what she could make of her life. These changes in individual women are possible, Scheman thinks because they are shared with a group. The reinterpretation of oneself that actually makes one a different person can only take place in a like-minded group. [30] Women's anger came to light and to life only in the founding of new kinds of institutions: the consciousness raising groups.
The longevity of capitalism may well be connected, in similar ways, with its ability to repress the anger provoked by capitalist exploitation, by alienation, by ecological devastation as well as the upheavals in individual lives created by periodic economic crises and imperialist wars.
So far Scheman rings one more change on the themes introduced by the other authors cited—on transforming needs and sexuality, and giving up the victim's role and passivity, transforming the dominant view of what is possible and what it makes sense to hope for. Her account is important because women chose to participate in the feminist movement. Personal change was freely chosen, even if not always clearly anticipated. That is an important thought to counterbalance the claims of a Marcuse that the distortion of human personalities is mainly the result of impersonal economic and technological forces. On the contrary, individual choices to join the Second Wave Feminist Movement played an important role in the changes wrought in women's personalities.
But then Scheman raises a further, and extremely important question: what made it possible for women to discover and articulate their anger in the 1970s when most women could not do that earlier? A necessary condition for these individual transformations was the explosive growth of second-wave feminism. [31] But what allowed that to develop? Here are some obvious suggestions: The women who built the planes and ships and produced the guns and shells for the US to end WWII victoriously went home at war's end different women. When they found themselves as homemakers in Levittown, mostly in the company of infants and toddlers, the pressure for change became powerful. It is not clear whether these suggestions, however obvious, are correct or how one would find those that are.
Scheman's observation is, however, very important: personal changes become possible only when history is prepared to support them. Reich, Marcuse, Gibson-Graham and others have reflected on the ways in which human personalities might change. But Scheman reminds us that historical conditions must be favorable. Now Marx, of course, believed that too but the historical conditions he considered essential were the collapse of the capitalist system. The historical conditions Scheman alludes too are the flowering of second wave feminism—an alteration in widespread ideas about what is just and fair, what women and men deserve. More importantly, the requisite historical condition consisted of a profound alteration in dominant values. Transformations of human personalities that might make profound alteration of social and economic institutions possible occur only in times of deep seated changes in the values and outlooks of many people.
Scheman's observations and those of Gibson-Graham derive from experience of the women's movement and the profound changes it has brought about in society. Nor are these isolated events. In the same period, the position of blacks in US society has undergone profound changes which have not yet come to an end. At the beginning of the same period, homosexuality was a shameful condition to be concealed at all costs. Today gay rights, while still opposed frantically, are slowly gaining. When asked their opinion about gay marriage, many young people respond with "what's the problem?" Values held for long periods change rather suddenly; viscerally anchored attitudes are transformed.
Gibson-Graham points out that these historical transformations are neither planned nor centrally organized. We witness them without fully understanding their origins. The radical transformations of socially shared values about racial differences, about gender differences, and different sexual choices are not at all transparent. One can write the history of these changes without fully understanding the motive forces behind those choices. That insight has a several important implications. Social change happens, often as the result of the strenuous effort of many different persons. But it is not at all clear why these efforts succeed at the moment when they do. Black people have rebelled against slavery ever since they set foot on these shores. Why did they have to wait until after World War II to make real headway in the struggle for emancipation? The same questions apply to women and to homosexuals. It is not clear what it is about the final efforts that makes them more successful than all the campaigns that preceded them. Hence it is very difficult, if not impossible, to predict what changes may occur in our future or to be sure what we must do to produce the sorts of changes we desire. [32] Workers have fought exploitation and alienation for several centuries. Why have they not yet succeeded? Considering the fights for liberation that have born fruits and those that ended—so far—in defeat we must admit that we understand these transformation much less than we had thought. Marx and Engels boldly claimed to understand and, to some extent, master social change. Today their claims seem excessive and refuted by historical events. We fall back on a more modest stance before history which, we acknowledge, we understand only very imperfectly. Efforts to ameliorate the world and to push back against the cruelty of capitalist economic arrangements are as important as ever but we can be less certain ahead of time what will prove successful or when.
That conclusion seems profoundly unsatisfactory; we still want to know what to do. But we need to give up the traditional attitude of the "scientific" Marxist who knows what capitalism and socialism are and what one needs to do to go from one to the other. Consider, once more, the second wave feminist movement. Not only was it not planned and directed by powerful leaders. It is not clear what the goals were. There certainly was nothing like the "socialization of means of production" to capture the goal in one phrase. Different women resisted sexism where they were and where it hurt especially. They had no rules about how to liberate women; they liberated themselves in different places and in different ways. In the process the lives of women changed, and so did women and men. Not all struggles bore fruit but the entire movement did. In similar ways, socialists must stop trying to "build socialism." They must, instead, resist capitalism where they are, in ways that are open to them, and where resistance seems particularly unavoidable because the injuries are unbearable. In this process, experiments with new institutions, with new ways of life and sociality may bear fruit and the socialist movement, in the words of Marx and Engels, "may succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of the ages and become fitted to found society anew." [33]
We do not know what socialism is nor how it is to be constructed. Our task is much more diffuse, much more messy and uncertain: to resist capitalism where we can, to liberate ourselves in any way we can, to experiment with new institutions and to keep the faith, to resist the temptation to lose hope.
NOTES
[1] Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher, Jr. "Rising to the Occasion: Reimagining Socialism: A Nation Forum" The Nation
(accessed 6/12/09 at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/ehrenreich_fletcher?rel=hp_picks)
[2] Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle ( Erfurt Program) (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Co., 1910): 159.
[3] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto in Robert Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1978):490.
[4] David Schweickart, "What to do when the Bailout Fails" Tikkun (accessed 06/14/2009 from http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/may_jun_09_schweickart)
[5] Branko Horvat, The Political Economy of Socialism: A Marxist Social Theory (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe: 1982): 439.
[6] Carl E. Schorske, German Social Democracy 1905 - 1917: The Development of the Great Schism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1975).
[7] David Schweickart, After Capitalism (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield: 2002).
[8] Michael Albert, Parecon (London: Verso, 2003)
[9] John E. Roemer, A Future for Socialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994): 50.
[10] Philipe van Parijs, What's Wrong with a Free Lunch (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).
[11] Roemer, Future for Socialism.
[12] Schweickart, After Capitalism: 12.
[13] G.A. Cohen, "Back to Socialist Basics" New Left Review 207(1994):3 16.; Michael Luntley, The Meaning of Socialism (LaSalle, Il.: Open Court, 1990).
[14] Milton Fisk, "Social Feelings and the Morality of Socialism" in Anatole Anton and Richard Schmitt, eds. Towards a New Socialism (Lanham, MD.: Lexington Books, 2007):117 - 144.
[15] Norman Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference (London: Verso, 1998).
[16] Diane Elson, "Market Socialism or Socialization of the market" NLR 172(1988):3- 44.; Robert J. van de Veen and Philipe van Parijs, "A Capitalist Road to Communism" Theory and Society 15(1987): 635 - 655.; Andre Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology (London: Verso, 1994).
[17] Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).; Hillel Ticktin, "The Problem is Market Socialism" in Bertell Ollman, ed., Market Socialism: A Debate (New York: Routledge: 1998):55 - 80.
[18] Hilary Wainwright, Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (London: Verso, 2003).
[19] Carlo Roselli, Liberal Socialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
[20] Schweickart, After Capitalism: 128.
[21] V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution (New York: International Publishers, 1932):43.
[22] Roemer, Future for Socialism:46.
[23] Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (New York: Farrar, Giroux and Strauss, 1970): 4
[24] Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967):xiii.
[25] Reich, Mass Psychology:31.
[26] Gibson-Graham, A Post-Capitalist Politics: Chapter 2.
[27] Gibson-Graham, Post Capitalist Politics: 139.
[28] Gibson-Graham, Post-Capitalist Politics: 33.
[29] Notice, however, that none of these authors insist that individual human beings need to change before social institutions change. On the contrary, in each case the human change is part and parcel of institutional transformations. Alternations of social institutions, however, are of relatively little import as long as the persons animating the institution are not affected and changed by their participation.
[30] Naomi Scheman, "Anger and the Politics of Naming" in Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge, Authority and Privilege (New York: Routledge,1993).
[31] Scheman "Politics of Naming": 33.
[32] Gibson-Graham, Post-Capitalist Politics, Introduction.
[33] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, German Ideology Tucker, 193.
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an economy that sustains solidarity
By Wetzel, Tom at Aug 19, 2009 15:47 PM
Richard,
I have always assumed that if an authentic socialism were to be constructed, it would have to be built by some sort of alliance of the working class and oppressed groups. But this means that at least a very massive working class-based movement would have to want to create it. It's hard for me to see how such a movement would come to exist if not because people are motivated to no longer be subordinate, dominated, exploited in the capitalist workplace and in the way the wealth of society produced there is distributed. I also do not believe that this could be the whole picture, for reasons I mention below.
Marx did say that the point to working class struggles is transformation of people. He envisioned a process of the working class changing from a class "in itself" -- objectively subordinated, controlled, exploited -- into a class "for itself." I don't mention this to defend Marx's reputation but because it seems to me that Marx was right about this. I think working people do in fact change through the experience of collective action, solidarity, struggle...in terms of learning things, growing more self-confident, more critical of the system, etc.
When you say that the workplace struggle doesn't lead the working class to a consciousness of a possible future beyond capitalism, it seems to me that you are overly pessimistic, and it seems to me you leave out some of the evidence. In fact there have been some very massive worker movements that did in fact develop an aspiration and struggle in the direction of building a worker-managed system beyond capitalism. I'm thinking of the hundreds of seizures of workplaces and very broad
socialist consciousness in the Russian working class in 1917, the widespread support for worker management of industry that manifested itself in the strikes and massive workplace occupations in Italy in 1919-20...leading that country to the brink of revolution in the summer of 1920. And then there was the high-water mark in movements of this kind...the seizure of more than 18,000 companies and 14 million acres of farm land by urban and rural workers in Spain in 1936, taking over most of the country's economy. And there were also the widespread worker takeovers as part of a tendency towards radical change in Chile in 1972-73.
The fact that the socialist movement became fixated on gaining control of the state from the '20s on may have contributed to weakening that sort of tendency within the working classes of various countries.
In the revolutions in Russia in 1917 and Spain in 1936 it is also important that the radical worker consciousness of that period was connected to a larger crisis of legitimacy in the overall governing institutions in those countries. So it seems that there was a kind of symbiotic relationship between what was going on in workplace organization and what was going on in the larger society. I do not propose any idea about how exactly this might unfold today. But if a change in consciousness in regard to one kind of oppression is possible...you give the example of the women's movement...why not in regard to the class relationship?
You write:
"Among the economic projects are, on the one hand, Market Socialism (often also called 'Economic Democracy') and, on the other, Democratic Planning. Under Market Socialism all workplaces are owned and run by the workers thereby ending the commodification of labor. Capital, no longer privately owned, is distributed by local branches of a government investment bank according to investment priorities set by the people at large (or, for instance, in the United States by Congress)."
I'd distinguish two different models, both called "Economic Democracy." In the version formulated by Robert Dahl and David Ellerman, the firms are privately owned by the workers...as are worker coops at present. Ellerman introduces a useful concept that he calls "residual claimant." The residual claimant in an economic operation is the entity that is responsible for the bills, for the debts, and also the entity that has ownership rights to the revenue. In a competitive market economy, the firm is the residual claimant. And in a market economy, each firm is under competitive pressure to try to accrue a surplus of revenue over expenses...that is, a profit.
Now, David Scheickart's model, which it seems you have in mind, is based on the Yugoslav model where there is a democratic structure nominally controlled by the workers but the means of production are owned by the state. Workers are not co-owners of the firm. In this model, the firm is still a residual claimant. Hence it will still be driven to accrue a surplus of revenue over expenses, that is, a profit.
And this means that in fact labor will still be a commodity. That's because workers will be able to obtain an income based on their bargaining power in the labor market. People who have skills that are very important to a firm's profit-making prospects...savvy marketing skills, charismatic management leadership ability, proven engineering expertise...will be able to command higher wages and privileged treatment within the firm.
i guess I don't see why a national investment bank is needed. banks are likely to be run by techno-crats and they will be seeking to invest based on return to the bank, presumably. in Schweickart's Economic Democracy, they evaluate proposals from firms in roughly a similar way to banks now, that is, they look at the profitability of the firm and the likely "success" -- in terms of surplus accrual to the firm -- from the proposed business plan.
under participatory planning, as I understand it, investment is allocated directly to the various industries based on a social process of negotiation in which consumers, industries, communities put forth their various proposals. Assets are not "loaned" with the idea of a return tho worker organization budgets are charged a use fee that would be analogous to depreciation. The investment is then socially owned in the sense that all the means of production that are created are socially owned. Worker organizations use the means of production and manage their own work autonomously, as long as they are successful in living up to the conditions of their contract, of sorts, with the rest of society. Workers are sort of paid by society as a whole, not based on profit of their firm. they are paid either effort wages or, to simplify, an equal hourly rate. "Socially owned" means in this context that there is a democratic social process through which the worker production organizations are accountable to the rest of society in how they use the means of production. It also means that means of production can't be sold off...for example, production groups can't sell their means of production and then pocket the proceeds.
Now, the key question you raise is the need for an ethic of solidarity if a socialist economy is to work. But where does that come from? I think we'd never actually be able to create such an economy without there already having developed a very high level of solidarity, in the struggle against the dominating classes and the various institutions linked to them, and connected in general with increasing support for an aim of creating a society where people are equals, where people have a real equal access to the means of sustaining and developing their lives...ending not only class subordination but also healing, overcoming gender and nationality based forms of structural inequality.
So, instead of saying that no socialist institutions would work without some other (extra-institutional?) source for an ethic of solidarity, I'd say that what are needed, in terms of new institutions, are institutions that reward solidarity. Thus if we set up an economy where firms are residual claimants, where some workers can look forward to making more than others in society based on luck or competitive prowess in the market, I think that undermines solidarity.
On the other hand, if we have an economy that guarantees that people's needs are met and rewards people equally for their effort and ensures maximum opportunity to develop their talents and skills, such an arrangement would tend to bolster solidarity, it seems to me.
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Re: an economy that sustains solidarity
By Schmitt, Richard at Aug 24, 2009 06:24 AM
Thanks for this very rich comment, Tom.
The controversy over "Economic Democracy" vs. "Participatory Planning" is very
complex. Schweickart has some answers to the problems you raise. On the other
hand, the question whether "Participatory Planning" is workable still needs to be
addressed.
The chief difference between your point of view and mine concerns the order of
changes. I think that without fundamental moral changes, workers' movements
will not be able to create and maintain alternative ( i.e. socialist) institutions.
You think that if we [important question: who are these "we"?] build institutions that
reward solidarity, the world will change. Yes you are right, of course, workers have
constructed various self-managed projects; they have sacrificed to build their own
organizations. But what emerges in the end are unions like the current large labor
unions for whom business unionism is the only possible course. As lomg as the
capitalist ethic of "looking out for number 1" prevails, workers organizations degenrate into
adjuncts of the capitalist system. I do not think that that is being "pessimistic." It
is reading our history.
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Missing the point
By Davidson, Carl at Aug 06, 2009 08:11 AM
Schmitt is missing the point Fletcher-Ehrenreich and others are trying to make about organizing, ie, if you want to do any of the things suggested here, or elsewhere, you have to have something to do it WITH.
I'd guess there may be one million people in our country who consider themselves socialists of one sort or another, an unscientific figure I came up with by taking 50 percent of the white voters from Jesse Jackson's Rainbow runs.
Yet less the 20,000 people in the U.S. are members of any of the dozens of groups calling themselves socialist or communist. Take away those that are 'mailing list only' members, and it's less than 5000, and that's being generous.
So I don't believe the claim that a 'don't mourn, organize' drive is in effect and not producing any results. If you're a socialist reading this and not active in any socialist group, you're my case-in-point, and I'm sure there are many of you even on the more anarchist-inclined readers of Z-Net.
Don't wait for the 'perfect group.' Pick one close to you, and join it, and bring others with you. Then work for a degree of left unity on critical issues. But if you insist on the 'perfect group,' then get busy and launch it this year. 'Waiting for Lefty' won't do. We have serious challenges, and we need some critical mass to deal with it.
[Full Disclosure: My group, by the way, is Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. My report on its recent convention is on my Z-Space blog. Google it for the web sites if you want to join or learn more.]
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Re: Missing the point
By Schmitt, Richard at Aug 06, 2009 19:28 PM
Yes, of course, Carl. If we want to do anything to do change the world we need to do it withother people.
I tried to suggest that we ALSO need to chnage and raised some questions about what we know about the process of human change.
Marx and Engels said that the socialist revolution would produce different men and women. Lenin proposed to build a socialist society with men and women as they are?
Where do you stand on that issue?
Richard
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Re: Missing the point
By Schmitt, Richard at Aug 06, 2009 19:28 PM
Yes, of course, Carl. If we want to do anything to do change the world we need to do it withother people.
I tried to suggest that we ALSO need to chnage and raised some questions about what we know about the process of human change.
Marx and Engels said that the socialist revolution would produce different men and women. Lenin proposed to build a socialist society with men and women as they are?
Where do you stand on that issue?
Richard
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Comment to Richard Schmitt
By Ferguson, Ann at Aug 02, 2009 14:38 PM
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Re: Comment to Richard Schmitt
By Ferguson, Ann at Aug 02, 2009 14:54 PM
Sorry that my comment was inadvertently posted with no content! I liked your thoughtful look at the different ideas of how to organize the economy that socialists have had, Richard, and your point seems plausible that we do not have a convincing theory of how to bring about the desired social transformation to get to a place where we can begin to do some experimenting on the institutions necessary for a democratic socialism. We know that the Black civil rights and women's movements did successfully change those within them so as to bring about some personal liberation for themselves while seeking to challenge racism and sexism but we really dont know WHY they were able to galvanize people toward that change at the particular moments in history that they occurred.
But I think that perhaps Barbara Epstein's point that we need to try (again) to create Left organization to debate these issues of the content of our visions and of strategies to bring about the social change we seek is important, and not mentioned in your article. And that instead of simply agreeing to organize on the least common denominator, e.g. as anticapitalists because we dont know whether market socialism or participatory planning (Parecon) will be the least corruptible, we need to continue to debate these issues as a part of our organizing--otherwise, when and if we get to the point where people are riled up enough by the injustices of capitalism to challenge the bankers, the political elite, etc, we wont have any clear picture of what to try when we get there.
I also think that the socialist Left needs to be debating issues like the persistence of violence against women and its causes and issues of justice to people of color because of past racism (e.g. Black , Chicano and Native American reparation) as well as how to reform electoral politics so it does not recreate the hierarchical political elites that we keep seeing happen (the anarchist question of the State, in other words). Your essay gives the Black civil rights and women's movements as examples of radical social change but this is not enough: the demands of these movements need to be incorporated into our visions of socialism everytime we describe them!
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Re: Re: Comment to Richard Schmitt
By Schmitt, Richard at Aug 04, 2009 11:15 AM
Thank you for your comment, Ann, and thank you also for coninuing to remind us to put the struggle against patriarchy and white supremacy in the center of political thinking and activity.
Richard
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