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"In coordinatorism, capitalists are gone. Managers, planners, engineers,
and other intellectuals define work, using either central planning or
markets for allocation. Workers continue to carry out tasks defined
by others."
For those readers
interested in our critique of Marxist theory, see our Unorthodox Marxism and Marxism
and Socialist Theory (both published by South End Press, 1978, 1981).
For a more detailed critique of the Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban experiences,
see our Socialism Today and Tomorrow
(South End Press, 198 1). For a more detailed description of our
alternative approach to understanding history and society, an approach
emphasizing economics, gender, culture, and politics on an equal, interactive
footing, see Liberating Theory,
coauthored with Noam Chomsky, Leslie Cagan, Mel King, Lydia Sargent,
and Holly Sklar (South End Press, 1986). Finally, for those interested
in a more mathematical presentation of arguments regarding the inherent
deficiencies of coordinator and capitalist economies, see our Quiet
Revolution in Welfare Economics (Princeton University Press, 1990).
"So the choices for modern economic institutions are threefold -
capitalism, coordinatorism,
or what we call 'participatory economics.' The failure of coordinatorism
doesn't imply that the only
remaining option is capitalism."
Between revolutionary dictatorship and the state principle the difference
is only in the external situation. In substance both are one and the
same: the ruling of the majority by the minority in the name of the
alleged stupidity of the first and the alleged superior intelligence
of the second. Therefore both are equally reactionary, both having as
their result the invariable consolidation of the political and economic
privileges of the ruling minority and the political and economic enslavement
of the masses of people.
- Mikhail Bakunin
Statism and Anarchism
"In other words, Trotsky
didn't reluctantly accede to coordinator structures out of Civil War
- compelled necessity, as apologists maintain, but because he preferred
them."
"Apparently
for Lenin, like Trotsky, it was sufficient that the 'will of one' be
well motivated, an analysis Stalin no doubt appreciated. "
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Coordinatorism
Following the fine and sober book by the Hungarians
George Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich),
we can transcend the U.S. government, the Soviet government, the
New York Times, and most
Western Marxists to see that
in the Eastern bloc workers do not and never
have ruled their own economic lives. There, as in the West, intellectuals'
earnings are considerably higher than workers' earnings. White - collar
conceptual workers live in larger, more comfortable dwellings in better
neighborhoods. They get quicker permission to settle in the cities and
to inhabit subsidized housing with superior services. They live relatively
close to their places of work, while a good part of the working class
is obliged to commute from ill - serviced villages or suburban ghettos.
Children of the intelligentsia go to better schools and attain university
degrees in higher proportion. Only intellectuals and their dependents
gain entry to special hospitals providing outstanding care for state
and party officials. Even the cafeterias of institutions employing mostly
intellectuals offer better meals than factory canteens.
More important, Konrad and Szelenyi also
tell us that, "for all his [sic] alleged 'leading role,' [the worker
in these economies] has just as little say in the high - or low - level
decisions of his enterprise as the worker in a capitalist plant. He
has no voice in deciding whether operations will be expanded or cut
back, what will be produced, what kind of equipment he will use and
what direction (if any) technical development will take, whether he
will work for piece rates or receive an hourly wage, how performance
will be measured and production norms calculated, how workers' wages
will evolve relative to the profitability of the enterprise, or how
the authority structure of the plant, from managing director to shop
foreman, will operate." Workers, then, get what they can the same
way in the East as in the West - by demanding and occasionally winning
it - here from capitalists, there from coordinators.
In capitalism, capitalists own the means of production,
use markets for allocation, define the purpose and character of work,
and hire and fire workers (and
managers). In coordinatorism, capitalists are gone. Managers, planners,
engineers, and other intellectuals define work, using either central
planning or markets for allocation. Workers continue to carry out tasks
defined by others.
While their class structures and internal dynamics
yield different allocations of wealth and income, in one respect these
two systems closely resemble each other: "labor is external to
the worker." Ironically, these words that Marx wrote to describe
capitalism apply as well to coordinatorism. "Workers do not affirm
themselves in their work. They do not feel content but unhappy."
Work does not "freely develop workers' physical and mental energies"
but "mortifies their body and ruins their minds." Workers
"only feel themselves outside their work, and in their work feel
outside themselves." They are "at home when they are not working
and when they are working they are not at home." "Workers'
labor is therefore not voluntary but coerced; it is forced labor."
It is "not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to
satisfy needs external to it." The contest between the U.S. and
the Soviet economic systems has always been largely irrelevant for workers
since neither system serves them and both oppress them.
So whose "needs external to it" do
govern work in coordinator economies? Konrad and Szelenyi don't hedge:
"The Communist parties, after coming to power, quickly dissolved
or transformed every organization in which only workers participated,
from workers' councils, factory committees, and trade unions, to workers'
singing societies, theatrical groups, and sports clubs...." From
this Konrad and Szelenyi deduce that Bolshevism "offered the intellectuals
a program for freeing themselves of the duty of representing particular
interests once power had been secured, and it used particular interests
simply as a means of acquiring power." They conclude that "with
the expropriation of the expropriators that is, with the transfer of
the right to dispose over the surplus product from landlords and capitalists
to intellectuals in power, or to worker cadres whose political positions
and functions made intellectuals of them - and with the destruction
of the immediate producers' organs of management and control - the Bolsheviks
traced the outlines of a new rational - redistributive system [i.e.
coordinatorism]."
Coordinatorism distributes productive responsibilities
so that some people (the coordinators) do primarily conceptual, administrative,
and creative tasks, while others (the workers) do primarily rote tasks
defined by others; that is, the former rule the latter. But the promise
of economic liberation has always been to distribute productive responsibilities
so that everyone has a fair
share of opportunities for performing conceptual and executionary labor
with all workers thereby entitled and prepared to play a proportionate
role in determining events. This is a "third way."
So the choices for modem economic institutions
are threefold capitalism,
coordinatorism, and what we call "participatory economics."
The failure of coordinatorism doesn't imply that the only remaining
option is capitalism.
For readers versed in the relevant history, it
is instructive to remember what Karl Marx said about desirable economies
in his Philosophic Manuscripts:
"In the individual expression of my own life I would have brought
about the immediate expression of your life, and so in my individual
activity I would have directly confirmed and realized my authentic nature,
my human, communal nature.... My labor would be the free expression
and hence the enjoyment of life." This sentiment was and is liberating.
But it has nothing in common with regimented central
planning, the competitive selfishness of markets, or the authoritarian
sentiments of official Marxism itself. Therefore the failure of these
systems says nothing about the efficacy of trying to make our labors
"the free expression and hence the enjoyment of life."
The Origins of Coordinatorism
So where did coordinatorism begin? Few commentators
today have anything nice to say about Stalin, but the problems of Eastern bloc coordinatorism and political authoritarianism began
much earlier. In other writings, listed on page 6, we have traced contemporary
difficulties back to weaknesses in the original Marxist theoretical
framework. Here we illustrate the anti - egalitarian and antiparticipatory
sentiments of the leaders of the Russian revolution.
Leon Trotsky, a famous creator
of the first coordinator economic system, said that the social rule
of workers over society "is expressed ... not at all in the form
in which individual economic enterprises are administered." That
is, Trotsky felt it would be fine for the Bolsheviks to leave the usual
factory hierarchy in place so long as central administrators like himself
ruled "in the interests of workers." As to why Trotsky championed
"one - man management" in the factory we need took no further
than his cynical view of human nature: "It is a general rule that
man will try to get out of work. Man is a lazy animal." Naturally
comrades at the center of society must sometimes coerce "lazy animals"
for their own good. Finally, Trotsky added: "I consider that if
the Civil War had not plundered our economic organs of all that was
strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative, we should
undoubtedly have entered the path of one - man management much sooner
and much less painfully." In other words, Trotsky didn't reluctantly
accede to coordinator structures out of necessities compelled by the
Civil War, as apologists maintain, but because he preferred them. These
elitist sentiments defined Trotsky's agenda for society, a coordinator
and not socialist agenda in which central administrators would appoint
"one - man managers" who would rule over "lazy workers,"
in the workers' own interests, of course. If autonomous workers' organizations
must be smashed in the process, so be it. They only prevent those such
as Trotsky from protecting workers from the consequences of their own
laziness - from ruling the workers to free them, so to speak. It is
clear this coordinator agenda had nothing to do with making labor a
"free expression and hence the enjoyment of life."
Lenin evidenced his own coordinator orientation
when he argued: "It is absolutely essential that all authority
in the factories should be concentrated in the hands of management."
He followed this logic to its conclusion, noting that "any direct
intervention by the trade unions in the management of enterprises must
be regarded as positively harmful and impermissible." Whereas Trotsky
appealed to a cynical view of human nature to justify coordinatorism,
Lenin appealed to another bulwark of antidemocratic economic ideology,
modem technology. "Large scale machine industry which is the central
productive source and foundation of socialism calls for absolute and
strict unity of will... How can strict unity of will be ensured? By
thousands subordinating their will to the will of one." Apparently
for Lenin, like Trotsky, it was sufficient that the "will of one"
be well motivated, an analysis Stalin no doubt appreciated.
In response to workers who didn't
accept his self - serving analysis and demanded more say over economic
policy, Lenin thundered: "A producer's congress! What precisely
does that mean? It is difficult to find words to describe this folly.
I keep asking myself can they be joking? Can one really take these people
seriously? While production is always necessary, democracy is not. Democracy
of production engenders a series of radically false ideas." Perhaps
one of the radically false ideas Lenin had in mind was that work should
be "the free expression and hence the enjoyment of life."
In contrast to the coordinator sentiments of Lenin
and Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg expressed a liberatory disposition when
she criticized the Bolsheviks: "Finally we saw the birth of a
far more legitimate offspring of the historical process: the Russian
workers' movement, which for the first time, gave expression to the
real will of the popular masses. Then the leadership of the Russian
revolution leapt up to balance on their shoulders, and once more appointed
itself the all powerful director of history, this time in the person
of his highness the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Workers
Party. This skillful acrobat did not even realize that the only one
capable of playing the part of director is the collective ego of the
working class, which has sovereign right to make mistakes and to learn
the dialectics of history by itself Let us put it quite bluntly: the
errors committed by a truly revolutionary workers' movement are historically
far more fruitful than the correct decisions of the finest Central
Committee."
Luxemburg captured the difference
between coordinator and liberatory inclinations when she said: "Me
discipline which Lenin has in mind is driven home to the proletariat
not only in the factory, but in the barracks, and by all sorts of bureaucracies,
in short by the whole power machine of the centralized bourgeois state...
It is an abuse of words to apply the same term - 'discipline' to such
unrelated concepts as the mindless reflex motions of a body with a thousand
hands and a thousand legs, and the spontaneous coordination of the conscious
political acts of a group of men. What can the well - ordered docility
of the former have in common with the aspirations of a class struggling
for its emancipation?"
The answer, of course, is nothing.
The question that remains is whether we can create an economic system
that is efficient, equitable, and ecologically sound based on the self
- organization and collective self - management of workers and consumers.
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