Participatory Planned Economy

To see how this follows from dividing labor as indicated, imagine that overnight it is decided to hold formally democratic votes on various policies in a typical corporate workplace. The jobs in that workplace, however, are to remain as we currently know them. The managers, CEOs, engineers, custodians, shipping clerks, and assembly workers are all going to vote on large policies that provide the overarching norms for their daily activities—but in their daily activity they are going to do just as they have done before, with the same autonomy or lack of it, the same empowering work or lack of it, and so on. Despite the one-person-one-vote majority rules approach to the biggest decisions, we can predict that in the process of developing options to vote on and then arguing on their behalf, only the views of the employees with access to knowledge of the workplace and with relevant decision-making skills will come to the fore. They will set agendas. They will pontificate ponderously or compellingly, alone. Their desires will overwhelmingly dominate proposals, discussion, debate, and choice. The hierarchical distribution of empowering circumstances conferring to only a few actors informed opinions and decision-making information, skills, and confidence, will obstruct participation of all actors in voting. Corporate divisions of labor will ensure that a few would give orders and most obey, and these are not conditions conducive to all participating equally. With corporate organization, that is, formal democracy becomes not just a facade on top of unequal conception and debate, but an annoyance that wastes time and energy. If you are low in the hierarchy, why should you attend meetings and vote when your attendance and vote have little to no impact since real decisions are largely made before you ever arrive on the scene? Why should those who do impact outcomes put up with the participation of the uninformed and risk having to waste time trying to convince them which options to pursue? Hierarchical work organization empowers a few and gives those few every incentive to replace formally democratic rules with their own explicit domination of every facet of decision-making. Corporate divisions of labor do not advance and in fact overwhelmingly obstruct self-management.

RedSun wrote:I've watched both the lecture and the discussion, although I haven't yet read Parecon. I have a few questions:

Is there any evidence to suggest that a democratically planned economy has any better chance of success than the centrally planned economies of Soviet Russia, Maoist China, and the like,

or that economic planning is morally or practically better than the market?

Michael Albert wisely pointed out that any kind of desire for self-management and balanced job complexes should be reflected in the structure of the revolutionary groups that try and bring a socialist nation about. How does the RSF plan to do this?

How would a company with balanced job complexes deal with specialist work like that of surgeons?

Wouldn’t it be horribly inefficient for Doctors and other highly trained professionals to be required to do unskilled work like changing bedpans?

This isn’t true, depending, as always, what you mean by efficiency. For Mozart to do unskilled work instead of writing music costs humanity every time it occurs far more than for me to do unskilled work rather than, oh, whatever I may do that is skilled. This is true enough...

The question is what happens when we talk in terms of large numbers of people, on the one hand, and what is at stake beyond merely the material or service product of each person’s labors, on the other. Thus, for whatever losses society incurs for some people spending some time not utilizing their greatest and most revered talents, even in the case of geniuses – how much is gained by the release of new talents and genius from constituencies previously dumbed down to fit rote work slots? And how much is gained, in a social and other sense, from attaining equity of circumstances and empowerment? It is pointless to look at one side of a trade-off without attending to the other side.

In parecon, the point is that each actor occupies a balanced job complex of his or her or choosing, from among all those available that he or she is qualified for. To prepare for this, each actor’s education needs to leave them capable of informed and effective participation in decision-making. As well, the economy can only benefit from each actor using, as they choose, their educational experience to enlarge their potentials and capacities, and from the education system promoting this result for everyone. This is quite the opposite from now. In capitalism the economy needs workers suited to the available job offerings (this much is always true, in any economy) and capitalist offerings are highly skewed, requiring that most actors are accustomed to boredom, have no expectations of controlling their circumstances, have no related skills or knowledge, and so on. In other words, the economy needs the school system to dumb people down in order that they fit its limited role offerings – precisely the result that we see. In parecon precisely the opposite obtains.

So, even if we ignore the increases in justice and sociality, etc., from having balanced job complexes – the question over output becomes do we lose more by the fact that Mozart and some great surgeon have to spend time on tasks that are onerous or boring than we gain by the fact that (a) there are many more Mozart’s and people of great surgical talents discovered due to a school system and culture that promotes excellence in all and (b) across the board we are getting more capacity-enrichment and utilization from everyone previously dumbed-down and consigned to have their talents hidden and made dormant and dead?

RedSun wrote:This all sounds very reasonable, but can Albert actually substantiate this with evidence? Why doesn't he do research and actually demonstrate that this tends to occur via a study of existing worker-run businesses?

I've heard of instances where workers actually demonstrate contempt for the decisions of management, which would counteract in that particular circumstance most of Albert's line of logic.

RedSun wrote:Is there any evidence to suggest that a democratically planned economy has any better chance of success than the centrally planned economies of Soviet Russia, Maoist China, and the like

or that economic planning is morally or practically better than the market?

This all sounds very reasonable, but can Albert actually substantiate this with evidence? Why doesn't he do research and actually demonstrate that this tends to occur via a study of existing worker-run businesses? I've heard of instances where workers actually demonstrate contempt for the decisions of management, which would counteract in that particular circumstance most of Albert's line of logic.

Rev Scare wrote:I recall a handful of studies on worker cooperatives that have indeed linked participation to empowerment, sense of commitment, and responsibility; I do not have these recorded, but I will do my best to procure them.

Celtiberian wrote:Michael Albert has spent a great deal of time visiting worker cooperatives around the world and observing their strengths and weaknesses. He even organized South End Press as a self-managed enterprise, and it practiced many principles parecon advocates (e.g., balanced job complexes, effort-based remuneration, etc.).

RedSun wrote:I'm sure he has, but it would still be much nicer for one trying to read his work and talk about it to other people if he could cite real-life examples of his points in his writing.

Thanks very much for your help, both of you.

I am increasingly coming to accept the necessity of using market syndicalism as a transition stage to parecon. One last question: how long do you anticipate (although I'm sure that any guess will prove to be wrong) that the transitional stage will be necessary before a socialist nation begins to reclaim its economy from the market and plan it democratically? What are the conditions that would show that this transition is now necessary and practical?

RedSun wrote:I said it was one last question. I lied: what is the difference between the consumers' councils proposed in the participatory allocation process and a democratic, decentralised socialist state? Is there one?

Using meta-analytic techniques, the author synthesizes the results of 43 published studies to investigate the effects on productivity of various forms of worker participation: worker participation in decision making; mandated codetermination; profit sharing; worker ownership (employee stock ownership or individual worker ownership of the firm's assets); and collective ownership of assets (workers' collective ownership of reserves over which they have no individual claim). He finds that codetermination laws are negatively associated with productivity, but profit sharing, worker ownership, and worker participation in decision making are all positively associated with productivity. All the observed correlations are stronger among labor-managed firms (firms owned and controlled by workers) than among participatory capitalist firms (firms adopting one or more participation schemes involving employees, such as ESOPs or quality circles).

Abstract:

An employee survey conducted by a Fortune 100 company in 2003 was the basis of the study. A mixed methodology analysis was performed to determine the relationships between involvement, empowerment, and satisfaction with respect to four job-types. Employee involvement was found to be significantly related to employee empowerment and employee empowerment was found to be significantly related to employee satisfaction. Employee satisfaction was determined to be positively related to the intent to remain with the company.

Further, the four job-types of (a)?hourly, (b)?salary nonmanagement, (c)?engineers, and (d)?managers were compared to each other to understand the difference in their levels of satisfaction. A significant difference was found in their attitudes concerning employee empowerment and employee satisfaction; however, the results were inconclusive regarding employee involvement. Nonetheless, managers were found to be the most satisfied in all three categories with hourly employees and engineers being the least satisfied.

The four processes of involvement were analyzed to understand their relationship to employee involvement. All processes correlated to involvement, and employees commented in particular about information and rewards. Only three of the four cognitions of empowerment were tested in this study, but all were found to have a significant relationship to employee empowerment. Technical workers were especially concerned about the competence cognition. Hierarchical organizational structure was also viewed to have a negative effect on empowerment.

RedSun wrote:Dragging this topic back to the top again...
David Schweickart makes an interesting point about parecon in Capitalism or Worker Control?, to wit: in a society where a whole host of consumer goods are available, how is one supposed to submit an individual consumption proposal for all of them? To do so would require the consumer to know exactly what he'll need for a certain period of time, and in what quantities and priority.
As Schweickart puts it, "How many rolls of cellophane tape will you need, and of what width, and how important are they compared to the number of vacuum cleaner bags?"
I'd add to this the difficulty of planning for types of consumption which are often by their very nature on impulse; for example, I don't plan at the beginning of the financial quarter how often I'm going to order, and which places I'll order it from, and what I'll order each time.

Red Aegis wrote:I found another debate and thought I'd share it.