Chapter Twelve: Participatory Vision
Informs Participatory Revolution
Draft of chapter for the book in process, Fanfare for the Future – please do not quote.
We now have the main components of a vision for new, desirable, institutions for a new, desirable, society. What do we call it? Many will call it participatory society. Many others will call it participatory socialism. Why the two names is one question we address in this chapter. A second is, what will be the place of a participatory society in the environment? Its ecological footprint? Also, what will be the place of a participatory society in the world – its international relations? Last, to motivate our next set of chapters which enter into much more detail – we very briefly outline the relation of participatory society to movements for social change. Let us take these in turn.
Hvorfor to navne
Our vision fulfills the stated aspirations of socialists – also anarchists, feminists, intercommunalists, and really everyone who stands for justice, etc. Grassroots socialists typically want justice, people controlling their own lives, classlessness, feminism, cultural diversity, and so on. So our vision suits them. So why not just call it socialism? Well, that term has been claimed – not to match the values, but for a specific mix of institutions also lumped under the terms Twentieth Century Socialism, market socialism, centrally planned, socialism, really existing socialism, and so on. They referent is the old Soviet Union, China, etc. These systems no more fulfill the values we have put forth than the U.S. System fulfills the values it advocates say they favor, diversity, freedom, democracy, fairness, and so on. What has usurped the name socialism has in fact typically not been very feminist, not been intercommunalist (almost the opposite), not been self managing (but instead grossly authoritarian), and not even been classless, its catchword label, but instead had its economies ruled by the coordinator class above workers.
All this is anathema. Take just the economy – which for socialists is what they mainly key in on. Heretofore socialism in practice – the institutions – has included at best paper councils with no real power (often after real ones have been destroyed), remuneration for output and power, corporate divisions of labor, allocation by markets, central planning, or a combination of the two – and, due to all that, coordinator class rule. In contrast, participatory economics, part of our developing vision, has worker and consumer councils as the vehicles of decision making, remuneration for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor, balanced job complexes, and allocation by participatory planning – and, due to all that, classlessness. This is not apples and oranges. It is arsenic and nutrition.
Okay, so we can’t call our vision socialism, it seems, for fear of implying it has something in common with all that. However, again, most socialists around the world, also reject – at least in theory – all that. And the propose essentially the same values we do. And many have already indicated their support for the new formulations. And they want to keep touch with the heritage – not out of loyalty to horrendous institutional choices of the past, but out of allegiance to the memory of all the grassroots activists, like themselves, who south a vision like ours but had their dreams subverted rather than fulfilled.
Okay, can we accommodate? Perhaps yes. Perhaps calling our economic vision participatory economics not market or centrally planned socialism, and calling our kinship, cultural, and political visions, participatory kinship, community, and polity – plus calling the amalgamation of it all participatory socialism, is enough to make the distinction. For those who think it is, and who want to continue the legacy not of one party states, class rule, quarter way or less feminism, and cultural homogenization – but of truly socialist values – calling the vision in this book participatory socialism will make sense. For those who worry even more about clarifying the differences with the past, calling it participatory society will make sense. Which name will emerge as used more, or perhaps even overall, time will tell. In either case, the shorthand version is parsoc.
Parsoc og økologi
When asking the implications of participatory society/socialism, or parsoc, for the ecology, the main issue is economics – but it is via production and consumption that by far the largest social impact on ecology occurs, and economies affect natural environments in diverse ways, of course. Economies add new contents to the environment, such as pollutants. They deplete natural contents from the environment, such as resources. They alter the arrangement and composition of attributes in the environment or the way in which people relate to the environment, such as by building dams or creating changed patterns of human habitation, among countless other possibilities. And each of these and other possible ways of an economy affecting the environment can, in turn, have additional ripple effects on nature’s composition and on people’s lives.
Thus, for example, an economy can add economic byproducts to the environment as in exhaust spewing from cars or smoke stacks accumulating chemicals in the atmosphere. In turn these effluents can impede breathing or alter the way the sun’s rays affect atmospheric temperatures. Both these economic implications can themselves have ripple effects on people’s health, or on air currents which then impact sea currents in turn affecting polar ice caps and then altering weather patterns, sea levels, and crop yields, in turn dramatically impacting human options and conditions.
Eller en økonomi kan bruge olie, vand eller skove, hvilket fører til, at folk må reducere deres brug af udtømte ressourcer og dermed påvirke det samlede niveau af både produktion og forbrug rundt om i verden, eller påvirke tilgængeligheden af næringsstoffer, der er afgørende for livet, eller af byggematerialer, der er nødvendige for at skabe boliger i mange dele af verden.
Or an economy can alter the shape and content of the natural environment’s dynamics, as for example when by reducing forests we reduce the supply of oxygen they emit into the atmosphere, or when by increasing the number of cows and affecting their eating patterns (to produce more tasty steak for ourselves) we increase the methane they expel, again leading to greenhouse effects that in turn alter global weather patterns, or when we alter human living patterns and thus transportation patterns and other consumption patterns and attitudes, affecting people’s on-going relations to mountains, rivers, air, and other species.
In the above cases and countless others impacting the supply or the quality of weather, air, water, or even noise, globally or regionally, or affecting resource availability, or even affecting the availability of enjoyable or natural environments, what we do in our economic lives affects either directly or by a many-step process, how we environmentally prosper or suffer in our daily lives, whether now or in the future, as well as how the environment itself adapts.
Med andre ord har økonomiske handlinger direkte, sekundære og tertiære påvirkninger på miljøet, og det ændrede miljø har til gengæld direkte, sekundære og tertiære påvirkninger på vores livsbetingelser.
Sometimes these effects are horrifying, as in seas rising to swallow coastal areas and even whole low lying countries, or as in crop, resource, or water depletion that causes starvation or other extreme widespread deprivations. Or maybe the effects are slightly less severe but still horrific as in tornados, hurricanes, droughts and floods devastating large swaths of population, or inflated cancer rates caused by polluted ground water or by escalated radiation cutting down large numbers of people early in life, or dams eliminating whole towns or villages due to their footprint. Or maybe the effects are limited to smaller areas suffering loss of enriching environmental surroundings when natural environments are paved over or when noise pollution arises from loud production or consumption.
Det følger af alle disse muligheder, at en økonomis forhold til det omgivende naturmiljø er dødeligt alvorligt, og at det ville være en fordømmende svaghed for enhver foreslået økonomisk model eller ny at fejle med hensyn til forholdet til miljøet, selv om det lykkes på alle andre kriterier. samfund.
Kapitalisme og økologi
Kapitalismen fejler dybt med hensyn til miljøet. For det første prioriterer kapitalismens markedssystem maksimering af kortsigtet profit uanset langsigtede implikationer. For det andet ignorerer markeder miljøeffekter og har indbygget incitamenter til at krænke miljøet, når det vil give overskud eller for den sags skyld forbrugernes tilfredsstillelse på bekostning af andre. Og for det tredje er der den kapitalistiske drift til at akkumulere uanset virkninger på livet og alle andre variabler.
In markets, to explain the above, a seller encounters a buyer. The seller tries to get as high a price as possible for the object sold while also diminishing costs of production. This is done to maximize profits, which in turn not only yields higher income, but also facilitates competition-enhancing investments undertaken to win market share and thereby stay in business.
Køberen forsøger i mellemtiden at betale for en vare så lav en pris som muligt og derefter at forbruge den med så stor opfyldelse som muligt uanset virkningen af disse handlinger på andre, om hvem der kun er få eller ingen oplysninger tilgængelige.
For both parties market exchange obscures the effects their choices have beyond the buyer and seller, and prevents taking into account the well being of those who feel these external effects.
More, if some course of action will lower the cost of producing an item or will increase the fulfillment of its consumption, but will also incur environmental degradation that affects someone other than the buyer or seller, that course of action will be undertaken. Thus we routinely use production techniques that pollute and also consume items with no regard for environmental impact.
Rock salt, it turns out, is a very effective tool for “keeping both private driveways and public highways from icing up.” Andrew Bard Schmookler reports that “…the runoff of the salt…causes damage to underground cables, car bodies, bridges, and groundwater. The cost of these damages is twenty to forty times the price of the salt to the persons or organization buying and using it.”
In other words, rock salt has unaccounted adverse effects beyond the buyers and sellers who choose to produce it, sell it, buy it, and use it, to keep road from icing up. Schmookler then reports that “there is an alternative product to rock salt that produces no such damage from runoff. It is called CMA, and it costs a good deal more than the salt. It costs less, however, than the damages the salt inflicts.” But "No highway department, homeowner, or business would purchase large quantities of CMA today even if it were widely available, because the individual doesn't care about [social] cost, only [about private] price."
Med andre ord skaber markeder incitamenter til at krænke miljøet og alt andet eksternt for køber og sælger, når det gøres, vil øge producentens fortjeneste.
This is just one of countless examples, chosen for its clarity, and as Schmookler rightly concludes, it shows that market forces “will make changes flow in a predictable direction, like water draining off the land, downhill, to the sea.”
That is, sellers will use production methods that spew pollution but that cost less than using clean technologies, or they will use production methods that damage groundwater or use up resources but that cost less than methods that don’t, or they will use production methods that build into products secondary effects which consumers who buy the product won’t directly suffer but others will, and which cost less. And the same logic will typically hold for consumer choices about how to utilize the items they have bought. The impact of their use on others will most often be unknown and ignored.
And it isn’t only that in each transaction the participants have an incentive to find the cheapest, most profitable course of production and the most personally fulfilling course of consumption, it is that markets compel the absolute maximum of exchanges to be enacted. There is a drive to buy and sell even beyond the direct benefits of doing so because each producer is weighing off not the benefits of a little more income versus a little more leisure due to working less but, instead, the benefits of staying in business versus going out of business. That is, each actor competes for market share to gain surpluses with which to invest to reduce future costs, pay for future advertising, etc., and these surpluses must be maximized in the present lest one is out competed in the future.
Kapløbet om markedsandele bliver en stræben efter konstant at samle profit uden pusterum, hvilket betyder at gøre det selv ud over, hvad ejernes grådighed ellers ville indebære.
I alle markedssystemer, og især på kapitalistiske markeder, er vækst gud. Den vejledende filosofi er at vokse eller dø uanset modsatrettede personlige tilbøjeligheder. Dette krænker ikke kun opmærksomheden på ressourcernes bæredygtighed, men producerer også en støt eskalerende strøm af affald og forurening. Transaktioner formerer sig, og i hver transaktion består incitamentet til at forurene og på anden måde krænke miljøet. I sidste ende er det, vi får, en økonomi, der spyr ud i, bruger op og ødelægger miljøet i massiv skala – lige fra at omdanne lokalsamfund til lossepladser, gøre byer syge af smog, forurene grundvandet, der igen eskalerer kræftfrekvensen, eller forårsager global opvarmning, der truer ikke kun rasende storme, men endda store omvæltninger af havniveauer og landbrug, med utallige omkostninger til følge.
Parsoc og økologi
Vil en participatorisk økonomi være bedre for miljøet end kapitalismen? Svaret er ja, af flere årsager.
For det første er der i en parecon ikke noget pres for at akkumulere. Hver producent er ikke tvunget til at forsøge at udvide overskuddet for at konkurrere med andre producenter om markedsandele, men i stedet afspejler produktionsniveauet en ægte formidling mellem ønsker om mere forbrug og ønsker om en lavere samlet mængde arbejde.
Med andre ord, mens afvejningen mellem arbejdskraft og fritid i kapitalismen er stærkt forudindtaget mod mere produktion til enhver tid på grund af behovet for overordnet vækst for at undgå svind og fiasko, er det i parecon en faktisk, reel, upartisk afvejning.
I et parecon står vi hver især over for et valg mellem at øge den samlede varighed og intensitet af vores arbejde for at øge vores forbrugsbudget, eller i stedet arbejde mindre for at øge vores samlede tid til rådighed til at nyde arbejdskraftens produkter og resten af livets muligheder. Og da samfundet som helhed står over for præcis det samme valg, kan vi med rimelighed forudsige, at i stedet for en praktisk talt grænseløs drift til at øge arbejdstiden og intensiteten, vil en parecon ikke have nogen drivkraft til at akkumulere output ud over niveauer, der opfylder behov og udvikler potentialer, og vil stabiliser derfor på meget lavere output og arbejdsniveauer – f.eks. tredive timers arbejde om ugen, og i sidste ende endnu mindre. Interessant og afslørende kritiserer nogle mainstream-økonomer, at folk i en parecon vil bestemme deres arbejdsniveauer og sandsynligvis vil beslutte mindre end nu som en fejl i stedet for at fejre det som en dyd, hvilket jeg selvfølgelig opfatter det for at være.
The second issue is one of valuation. Again unlike in capitalism, as well as with markets more generally, participatory planning doesn’t have each transaction determined only by the person who directly produces and the person who directly consumes, with each of these participants having structural incentives to maximize personal benefits regardless of the broader social impact. Instead, every act of production and consumption in a parecon is
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