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Draft of chapter for the book in process, Fanfare for the Future – please do not quote.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.
Zašto dva imena
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 i ekologija
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.
Ili gospodarstvo može potrošiti naftu, vodu ili šume, što dovodi do toga da ljudi moraju smanjiti korištenje osiromašenih resursa i tako utjecati na ukupnu razinu proizvodnje i potrošnje diljem svijeta, ili utjecati na dostupnost hranjivih tvari bitnih za život, ili građevinskog materijala potrebnog za izgradnju stanova u mnogim dijelovima svijeta.
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.
Drugim riječima, ekonomski činovi imaju izravne, sekundarne i tercijarne utjecaje na okoliš, a promijenjeni okoliš zauzvrat ima izravne, sekundarne i tercijarne utjecaje na naše životne uvjete.
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.
Iz svih ovih mogućnosti proizlazi da su odnosi gospodarstva prema okolnom prirodnom okolišu smrtno ozbiljni i da bi neuspjeh u pogledu odnosa prema okolišu, čak i ako bi se uspjelo po svim drugim kriterijima, bila osuđujuća slabost za bilo koji predloženi ekonomski model ili novi društvo.
Kapitalizam i ekologija
Kapitalizam užasno ne uspijeva u pogledu okoliša. Prvo, tržišni sustav kapitalizma daje prioritet maksimiziranju kratkoročnog profita bez obzira na dugoročne implikacije. Drugo, tržišta zanemaruju učinke na okoliš i ugradila su poticaje za narušavanje okoliša kad god to čini profit ili, što se toga tiče, zadovoljstvo potrošača na trošak drugih. I treće, postoji kapitalistički nagon za gomilanjem bez obzira na učinke na život i sve druge varijable.
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.
Kupac pak nastoji platiti artikl što nižom cijenom i potom ga konzumirati sa što većim zadovoljstvom bez obzira na utjecaj tih radnji na druge o kojima ima malo ili nimalo informacija.
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."
Drugim riječima, tržišta stvaraju poticaje za narušavanje okoliša i bilo što drugo izvan kupca i prodavača kad god to učini povećat će proizvođačev profit.
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.
Utrka za tržišnim udjelom postaje poriv za neprekidnim gomilanjem profita bez predaha, što znači da se to čini čak i iznad onoga što bi inače mogla dovesti do pohlepe vlasnika.
U svim tržišnim sustavima, a posebno u kapitalističkim tržištima, rast je bog. Filozofija vodilja je rasti ili umrijeti bez obzira na suprotne osobne sklonosti. Ovo ne samo da narušava brigu o održivosti resursa, već također proizvodi stalno rastući protok smeća i zagađenja. Transakcije se množe iu svakoj transakciji ostaje poticaj za zagađivanje i na bilo koji drugi način narušavanje okoliša. Na kraju, ono što dobivamo je ekonomija koja bljuje u, troši i oštećuje okoliš u golemim razmjerima – u rasponu od pretvaranja zajednica u smetlišta, zarađivanja gradova od smoga, zagađivanja podzemnih voda što zauzvrat povećava stopu raka ili uzrokujući globalno zatopljenje koje prijeti ne samo bijesnim olujama nego čak i golemim potresima razine oceana i poljoprivrede, s nesagledivim troškovima koji slijede.
Parsoc i ekologija
Hoće li participativna ekonomija biti bolja za okoliš od kapitalizma? Odgovor je da, iz više razloga.
Prvo, u pareconu nema pritiska za nakupljanje. Svaki proizvođač nije primoran pokušati povećati višak kako bi se natjecao s drugim proizvođačima za tržišni udio, već, umjesto toga, razina proizvodnje odražava istinsko posredovanje između želja za većom potrošnjom i želja za manjom ukupnom količinom rada.
Drugim riječima, dok je u kapitalizmu kompromis između rada i slobodnog vremena jako usmjeren prema većoj proizvodnji u svakom trenutku zbog potrebe za sveukupnim rastom kako bi se izbjeglo smanjenje i neuspjeh, u Pareconu je to stvarni, stvarni, nepristrani kompromis.
U pareconu se svatko od nas suočava s izborom između povećanja ukupnog trajanja i intenziteta našeg rada kako bismo povećali proračun za potrošnju ili, umjesto toga, raditi manje kako bismo povećali svoje ukupno vrijeme dostupno za uživanje u proizvodima rada i ostatku životnih opcija. A budući da se društvo u cjelini suočava s potpuno istim izborom, možemo razumno predvidjeti da umjesto gotovo neograničenog poriva za povećanjem radnih sati i intenziteta, parekon neće imati poriva za akumuliranjem učinka iznad razina koje zadovoljavaju potrebe i razvijaju potencijale, te će stoga se stabiliziraju na mnogo nižim razinama učinka i rada – recimo trideset sati rada tjedno, a na kraju i manje. Zanimljivo je i razotkrivajuće da neki mainstream ekonomisti kritiziraju da će ljudi u pareconu odlučivati o svojim razinama rada i da će se vjerojatno odlučiti za manje nego sada kao manu umjesto da to slave kao vrlinu, što ja naravno smatram takvim.
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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