Now the problem arises of how to unite freedom and organization; how
to combine mastery of the workers over the work with the binding up of all
this work in a well-planned social entirety. How to organize production, in
every shop as well as over the whole of world economy, in such a way that
they themselves as parts of a collaborating community regulate their work.
-Anton Pannekoek
The Lord of the Flies hung
in space before him. "What are you
doing out here all alone? Aren't you afraid of me?" Simon shook.
... There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the beast." Simon's
mouth labored, brought forth audible words. "Pig's head on a
stick."
-William Goldman
Lord of the Flies
... you need some
basis for determining an equitable, an above average, and a below-average
allocation of work effort. You need to know the average effort contributed by
each worker in your industry and workplace, and in society as a whole."
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Contours of Economic
Allocation
Participatory Communication
It would be
utopian to assume that people always knew where "society's
interest" lay and could be relied on to advance it. If we assume that everyone
always understands and considers "society'sinterest," we will have
assumed away all problems even before any human actor has appeared.
But having
avoided the temptation to solve all problems by assuming all people are
omniscient and saintly, we should also avoid assuming that everyone is
necessarily myopic and greedy. Taking into account social costs and benefits
when reasonable estimates are provided is a far cry from miraculously knowing
"society's interest." Moreover, in a context that promotes
solidarity, there is every reason to expect that people may come to care
about one another.
With this
established, we can ask what participatory economic actors need to know to
make sensible allocation decisions that promote solidarity, variety, and collective
self management.
A critical
insight is that everything has an "opportunity cost." Anything we
do will use time, energy, and resources that we cannot use for something
else. Proposing x, how can we know that the results will be better than applying
the same means to doing y instead? That is, the production of any good
entails "social opportunity costs" that are important to know if we
are to regulate production and consumption proportionately to its effects on
ourselves, our co-workers, and consumers.
First, as a
participatory worker you need to know how the goods you produce will be used
and how much people need them. For example, to decide how hard you want to
work and what technologies to use, you need to weigh the relative gains from working
less, or from employing technologies that are more fulfilling but less
productive, against the needs and desires of people you produce for. Clearly,
you can't get this information from knowing only the gross amount of money
anonymous consumers of unequal income will pay for your product.
Second, you
need some basis for determining an equitable, an above-average, and a
below-average allocation of work effort. You need to know the average effort
contributed by each worker in your industry and workplace, and in society as
a whole.
Third, as a
participatory consumer, to act responsibly you need to know what is a
reasonable, greedy, or overly frugal demand, and you have to be able to
balance gains to yourself or your family, neighborhood, or region against the
costs of providing what you seek. What allocation procedures can provide all
this information?
Under
capitalism, markets reduce information to manipulative advertising and to
prices that misrepresent true social costs and benefits. This precludes solidarity
and promotes control by experts or capitalists. In centrally-planned
economies, there is no democratic circulation of quantitative or qualitative
information. Central authorities determine what is to be known and what isn't
as well as who is to know and who isn't. Even local council structures won't
promote self-management and solidarity if allocation institutions deny
council members the means to intelligently express their preferences and
weigh them against the preferences of others. Assume, for example, that
workers and consumers are organized into councils but that these councils are
coordinated by competitive markets. Each council understands only its own
situation and the prices for which things can be bought and sold. Since
market prices misestimate social costs and benefits (due to ubiquitous
"external effects" which impact on people beyond immediate buyers
and sellers), the first problem is that market prices do not provide best
estimates of the true social costs and benefits to others of the things
council members request or supply. The second problem is that even if market
prices accurately estimated true social costs and benefits, with no further qualitative information about the
conditions that create the human costs and benefits for others, people do not
have the necessary information to develop empathy and come to consider
others' interests as they do their own. Third, in a competitive market
environment workers and consumers councils would have no incentive to
consider the interests of others. To survive in a competitive market
environment there is only an incentive to take maximum advantage of those
from whom one buys and to whom one sells. To behave differently is self
defeating.
In other
words, the information and incentive properties of markets prevent even
democratic councils from considering the well-being of others in making
decisions. As a result, council members in market systems sensibly leave
technical decisions to expert decision makers (what we call the coordinator
class), as in Yugoslavia. In contrast, in participatory economies, we need
allocation institutions that can successfully communicate socially relevant
and accurate information and also make it in the interest of every council to
further the interests of others. Then collective self-management will be both
possible and sensible.
For
"participatory accounting" the economy must therefore provide
information allowing producers and consumers to reason effectively about
their own needs and how they fit with everyone else's. A central task of
participatory allocation is therefore to provide information sufficient for
self management without rendering decision making excessively time consuming.
One tool to this end is to adapt the
use of prices and money by altering the definition of each.
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