Why we need to plan the economy
By Simon Hardy, Lambeth Left Unity
Capitalism is a social-economic system which concentrates power and wealth in the hands of a minority who own economy. They own the banks, supermarkets, the factories, the transport networks and key utilities. They run these enterprises for profit and they sell their services and goods on the market.
The capitalist class claim that a market based system is not only the most efficient and prosperous system humanity has ever conceived but it is also natural. Selling and buying goods and making money is part of who we are and we should embrace it. Capitalists argue that wealth is generated because they have invested wisely, that anyone can make it as long as they work hard enough and capitalism, left unfettered by the state or political forces, will provide for everyone’s needs. Competition between rival companies creates innovation which prevents stagnation, the reward for good innovation, design and marketing is profit – look at Apple.
They claim that the market is therefore the best mechanism for not only discovering what people want but also providing it for them. The market allows goods and services to flow to where they are most needed. Through the means of price signals advocates of the market maintain that it is the most sensitive and responsive economic mechanism to ensure needs are met. So, as consumers buy more of a particular needed good, driving up the price as scarcity sets in, leading the capitalists to respond by producing more of that item until the price is reduced again. The prices fluctuate through the market, capitalists see they can make a profit on a much needed item or service, so it is provided.
Are people hungry in a town centre? Then a McDonalds will provide the food they need and the company can make a handsome profit in the process. Everyone is happy.
Or are they?
Despite the propaganda and the fact that society seems to function quite well most of the time. There are problems with a market based economy.
First of all under capitalism the priority is profit, not social need. People might be hungry but if a company can’t make money out of it then what is the incentive to provide food? If capitalists can profit from human misery (for instance with treating sickness) then they will do so, but a profit based system discourages doing so where no profit can be made. Instead some capitalists give money to charities to fill the gaps, a sticking plaster for a system that created the gaps in the first place.
And look at where rule by capital has got key services like trains in Britain? The price of trains today puts them out of the reach of many working people, it can cost as much as £150 to go to Manchester from London. Profiteering by train companies only makes the service and the cost worse. Imagine what it will be like if they privatise Royal Mail soon. Consider, for instance how much it cost to send letters and parcels to the remote corners of places like Scotland?
A market economy driven by profit also institutionalises the exploitation of the workforce. People have to sell their labour to the capitalists in such a way that the capitalists only pay their workers what they can get away with, often as low as possible. Despite making super profits, Tesco has most of its staff on zero hour contracts or part time labour. Why won’t Tesco pay more in wages to its hard working staff, people who get to work at 6am to get the shop ready to open? Or have to work a night-shift dealing with drunks at 3am? Because to do so would eat into Tesco’s profits, and in our economy, profit is king.
There is also huge overproduction and waste under capitalism. Workers are not paid enough to buy back all the goods that they make so countless produce is simply destroyed or left to rot. The US overproduces grain every year and dumps it in the sea. EU farmers overproduce milk and flush it down drains. Car companies across the world over produce cars to the point where there is around 10 million unsold cars sitting in distribution yards across the world – with 4 million in Europe.
The idea that competition alone creates efficiency is false. Competition also creates waste as rival companies research and develop their own (very similar) products rather than pooling talent and resources. Look at the drug pharmaceuticals research into HIV, several companies racing against the clock to be the first to find a cure. Why don’t they co-operate and plan together? Because that would undermine the drive for profit that is pushing them forward.
And this leads to a final problem with the idea of a free market economy providing for everyone, a genuinely, completely free market economy is impossible, there is always some level of state intervention or spending to ensure society doesn’t collapse, whether it is paying for the military or providing welfare or subsidising farmers. Under capitalism there is already a lot of state planning and intervention into different parts of the economy. The military-industrial complex in the US is a classic example of this.
The alternative
In the face of a system where power rests in the hands of the super rich and their political allies in parliament, we have to argue for a society where decisions about our lives, work and economic well being are put into the hands of the majority of people. Why should capitalists decide who can work or not? We want to democratise our society, our economy and our political system out of the hands of elites. This means new institutions and forms of decision making outside of parliament, in our communities and workplaces.
But more than this it means we need an economic alternative to the market. Self management at work will help to democratise our workplaces out of the hands of the bosses and the managers, but if we still operate in a market based economy then each workplace will be subjected to the whims of the profit and loss.
The alternative is democratic planning of the economy.
This can sound outlandish, after all how can we plan a whole economy? But the fact of the matter is that a lot of the economy is already planned. Major companies like McDonalds and Tesco have complex business models and plans of production and distribution which allow them to source goods across the world and deliver them to us on the high street (or in Tesco’s case, to your door). Capitalism today is highly concentrated and centralised (think of media companies, food production or energy and pharmaceuticals). The problem is that we don’t control the economic levers of decisions and everything is shrouded in business secrecy (think about the recent horse meat scandal). All we are proposing to do is to take the already existing planning of the economy done by corporations, open it up, democratise it out of the hands of the elites and put it to use for all of us.
Today such a system would be even more possible than at any time in human history previously. With the latest computers, internet connections and modern communications we could automate planning as much as possible using the kind of systems that Amazon already employs. You order something, it is made, it is delivered to you.
Democratic planning is better than a free market because rather than people being able to ‘communicate’ what they want through consumerism, as a society we will be able to organise collectively to meet individual need. We could use the latest technology to organise production and distribution much more efficiently. If Swindon needs 10,000 pairs of shoes then that is what they can get. If Macclesfield needs 75 more computers then that is what they can get. In short we will control the economy, not the economy controlling us.
It is democratic instead of bureaucratic because it is a system that is based on the self organisation of the mass of people taking collective decisions. There would no doubt be some economic “experts” and planners, but their proposals and ideas would have to be put to the governing institutions of any socialist state, primarily the mass meetings of producers and consumers which would be organised under socialism. The democratic aspect is crucial to building an actual socialist society, rather than some unaccountable dictatorship or new elitist regime; unlike capitalism, we want to build a world where people have power over their own lives, including over how they work.
That’s because this argument comes down to a question not just of the economy, but work; what it is, who does it and for what end. Human labour is not a technical relation of production, it is a rich social interaction between different classes which under capitalism has exploitation at its core. At the heart of socialism is the view that we can free ourselves from the fetish of commodities, the idea that the things that we invest in inanimate objects power over us – for instance the desperate desire to own more money. It isn’t actually the money we want, it is the things we can buy with it. But it isn’t even really the things we buy with it it is how these things make us feel, how they perform for us, whether we can save time and energy with them and so on. Under a socially planned economy, no longer will we think that the appearance of things is the same as what they actually are, where we think a ‘fair days pay’ is doubling our wages when the bosses are still making profit from our unpaid labour.
For most people work under capitalism is boring, depressing, and alienating. As long as we work for the bosses and not ourselves we will constantly be pushed into the kind of degrading and unfulfilling work that leaves us exhausted every evening. Under the regime of the market we are pushed to breaking point to make money for the bosses or complete our office work, then thrown out of work as soon as the owner or managers decide they don’t need us any more. Planning an economy in such a way that it eliminates waste and unnecessary work (insurance sellers!) means we can spread the work out among all of us in such a way that we can reduce the working week to improve our standard of living. We won’t lose any money because instead of the money being taken for profit, it will be redistributed across the workforce. Under socialism wages will rise dramatically. What work we do still do could re-organised so that it becomes more enjoyable and fruitful. The ultimate aim is to break down the barriers between education, leisure and work and replace them with genuine human creativity in all walks of life.
Eventually we can collectively plan the economy to the point where we can abolish money and wages as we understand it today. We could replace them with measurements of time that we have worked, perhaps attached to electronic cards that we can use to purchase the things we need. A world without money and a world where there is no overproduction or planned under production for profit is a world in which we are no longer squandering the world’s resources and using our productive capacity to provide for everyone, not just those that can afford it.
And unlike capitalism we will work out the work that needs to be done by the whole of society in such a way that the young, the old or the sick and disabled are not penalised as they are under capitalism, forced into work or badly paid jobs. A socialist economy will find work for those who are able and provide for those who cannot. Unlike the right wing press socialists do not think that people are inherently lazy or workshy, people naturally collectively pull together to create things or run things if they think there is a value in it, as we have done for milliennia before the present. Some people understandably don’t want to work under capitalism because the kind of work we have to do is so alienating and awful that it is better to try and get out of it if you can.
The road to socialism
Will this kind of system be able to happen overnight? No. Just as capitalism developed over many years, so socialism will take time to organise properly. We would no doubt spend years with a mixed economy, part socialised and still part based on the market. Small shop keepers and businesses would not be expropriated immediately, market conditions would be improved for them in such a way that we can begin the process of voluntary incorporation into a wider plan over time.
But the problem with aiming, strategically for a mixed economy, not as something on the road to planning but as the end goal, is that it would require the continuation of private ownership and a profit based system. The continued existence of a “private sector” would only mean the continued exploitation of the workforce under the whip of capital. It would mean that a section of the population was still able to enrich itself at the expense of the rest of us and it would mean that the power would continue to accumulate in the hands of an elite. The continuation of any form of private property would have political consequences as the capitalists would struggle to free themselves from the “mixed” economy and force the de-socialisation of the economy – just as they forced denationalisation in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. There is no stable half way house between capitalism and socialism, there is one or the other – the decline of European Social Democracy is the result of this attempt to balance between two mutually incompatible systems.
But there are other pressing needs to start talking about planning. Capitalism as a system of profit is destroying the planet. We could well face a situation in 50 years time when we are dealing with scarcity and desperate need as farmland goes under water, crops fail and parts of the planet become uninhabitable. There will be huge refugee climate movements across the world. It is horrific to imagine how capitalism might deal with this crisis. Instead we had to be able to plan the economy in such a way we can make a strategic and qualitative move away from fossil fuels as soon as possible and prepare for a world in which the goods and services we came to expect in the past are no longer available in the same quantity, if at all. Only a democratic plan to the economy can begin to undertake this huge task.
Of course there are powerful vested interests in maintaining the profit system and continuing a system of exploitation over the working classes. These capitalists have the might of state power behind them, the police and armies and bureaucracies which raises serious political questions about how we could manage to take power into the hands of the masses instead of the elites. Clearly it will not be possible to fundamentally alter the organisation of the economy by passing laws in parliament, especially as what is being proposed is not a top down nationalisation of the economy, but a bottom up socialisation of the economy. That means supporting working class struggles and popular movements that empower people to take control of their own lives, living and working conditions as a step towards ending capitalism as a socio-economic system in its entirety.
Taking steps towards greater planning is essential for humanity to rid itself of the alienation of work, unemployment, low wages, dehumanising labour and profiteering by the rich minority. It is good sense, but sadly it is not yet common sense. Our work in the coming years has to be to make the case to go beyond capitalism, beyond the markets and towards a better world that we can build collectively together. Only such a world will allow us to truly be free, to experience our genuine individuality and lives free from economic slavery to an undemocratic system of greed.
32 comments
32 responses to “Why we need to plan the economy”
Left Unity is active in movements and campaigns across the left, working to create an alternative to the main political parties.
About Left Unity
Read our manifesto
Left Unity is a member of the European Left Party. 
Read the European Left Manifesto
ACTIVIST CALENDAR
Events and protests from around the movement, and local Left Unity meetings.
Saturday 21st June: End the Genocide – national march for Palestine
Join us to tell the government to end the genocide; stop arming Israel; and stop starving Gaza!
More details here
Summer University, 11-13 July, in Paris
Peace, planet, people: our common struggle
The EL’s annual summer university is taking place in Paris.
More events »
GET UPDATES
Sign up to the Left Unity email newsletter.
CAMPAIGNING MATERIALS
Get the latest Left Unity resources.
Capitalist anarchy, sometimes refered to as competition, must inevitably end in monopoly and economic stasis. It has grown to its outermost limits and exhuasted its full potential. In fact much of the growth at the end of its life has merely been the expansion of the cancerous tumours that killed it.
Sustainable economic and environmental planning in accordance with a democratic plan is essential but nothing whatsoever can be done about that until the bail out of the creditors of the bankrupt banks is ended and the staff, estates and deposits of these banks are taken into administration to form a new National Bank lending money at base rate to small business and facilitating social investment in accordance with that plan.
This new bank must have a monopoly of credit to prevent private financiers from ever ripping off society ever again. Thatcher and Reagan assured us when they unleashed the Big Bang of banking deregulation in the 80s that `enlightened self-interest’ would prevent the bankers from allowing the supply of money to outstrip the demand. The result was the greatest credit bubble turned Ponzi Scheme the world has ever seen and of course the inevitable Big Crunch of 2008 which signalled the Collapse of Capitalism. They ripped us all off big time and created trillions and trillions and trillions of counterfeit claims on the social wealth in the form of bonds which governments around the world are now trying to honour at the expense of the poor, sick, old, disabled, young and working people.
Marx said that no mode of production disappears from history until it has completely exhausted its potential. Comrades we are there. Never has it been more true than now that the choice before us is socialism or barbarisml, planned economy or a New Dark Ages as the film of globalisation is wound off backwards and inter-imperialist rivalries deepen and become catastrophically violent.
The Manifesto Group has a resolution on the question of banking that it wishes to see discussed at Conference. Please support it. We are the only group that is putting forward actual policy for Left Unity as a whole to discuss not for a few professional activits in the policy forums. We also reject the sectarian platforms of Socialist Platform and Left Party Platform as divisive and a terrible distraction of the task in hand which is to create an actual alternative to New Labour. That means a programme for principled left unity and the transition to socialism. The sects do not have programmes they have only statements, lists of platitudes, because ultimately they do not want to engage politically in the class struggle or fight elections (you’d have to open your books up to public scrutiny if you did and they don’t want that). Our radical programme actually has policies that when people ask us about jobs, banks, the EU, cuts, the profiteering monopolies we have something to say to them. I fear that all this chat about platforms is preventing LU from hitting the ground running and may even be fatal.
Good basis for discussion and making this the cornerstone of LU. Good response from Baton Rouge too – take out the class struggle and it would be perfect. If all Left Unity debate is framed in this kind of language I think there is hope.
Capitalism is in serious crisis. It is failing to meet the basic needs of huge numbers of people & underpins imperialism & war. Increasingly people are looking for an alternative. Simon nicely articulates the socialist alternative.
Under socialism we all social/communally own & control the economy. We no longer only have just our labour power to sell to the ruling class just to survive.
The basic institution for socialism is likely to be the council. Not run by elected local councillors, but the forum where everyone can attend to make the decisions & enact them. It is this participatory democracy that needs to be emphasised to avoid any impression that we will be run by bureaucratic commissars, just like the Soviet Union was.
The councils will likely be at different geographical levels, e.g. street, parish, town, county, country, world. The street & parish levels can probably be based upon direct democracy, where everyone can attend as an equal. The bigger geographical areas will either have some form of elections or preferably positions filled by lots. Decisions, even at a world level, should be taken as much as possible by on-line participatory democracy, e.g. the whole world should have a say as to whether we devote the resources necessary to send a person to Mars.
The actual day to day production of goods, what & how much, can be inferred from data already collected by supermarket club cards. These electronic cards may continue as a way of monitoring what people actually want produced. The councils will be tasked with co-ordinating production & hence the trade-off between time required to work to produce & amount consumed will become more apparent. The council can also ensure that the empowering & the mundane tasks are spread evenly.
There is no exact blue-print, & there will be trial & error, but at long last humanity will have the collective freedom to choose it’s own destiny & can start to address the ecological crisis & inequality.
We need to have the vision to see beyond capitalism. To lift up people’s heads to see a better world. We are the historical force to realise it.
“The basic institution for socialism is likely to be the council. Not run by elected local councillors, but the forum where everyone can attend to make the decisions & enact them.”
People are very busy.. most professional jobs in this country are 50 hours a week or more. I don’t have time to spend hours debating at the local town hall. What you are therefore suggesting is taking away my democratic right for an elected representative of my choosing to argue for me.
with perhaps the right intentions, many aspects of direct democracy are inherently undemocratic!
I agree. The problem with the council/soviet model is that it gives power to those that can be bothered, have the time and/or like the sound of their own voice, probably more intellectuals who take control from the mass of people. Delegates and recall are much better.
Patrick,
Working long hours is a capitalist problem.
We’re talking about a future socialist society, where depending upon what balance people want between production & consumption, the working day will be considerably less, certainly not 50 hours a week.
That will mean time to attend councils or spend on-line expressing your preferences.
Participatory democracy means participating.
Voting once every five years isn’t even close to being democracy.
Regards,
John
“Working long hours is a capitalist problem!”
Actually not necessarily! I am an academic. The reason I work so many hours is that I want the prestige of big discoveries associated with me rather than someone else. I discuss regularly with Chinese and Russian academics and it was the same in 1980’s China and the Soviet Union.
However, even if I was working a normal 40 hour week; I would prefer to use that time to enjoy life!
Simon rightly points out the waste that a capitalist system creates. For example why does nearly every home require a washing machine that is used maybe once a day at most? Why does every home require its own collection of CDs or DVDs? And why does each home need to cook just for its own every evening when in each street people could provide a meal for all once a month? For women (mostly) domestic labour is a chore and is often done on top of a paid job outside the home. A socialist society could collectivise domestic labour, sharing commodities like washing machines and cooking meals for groups of people. It’s true there is no blue-print but we can dream about it!
Been tried.Doesnt work!
Without a class of people the majority int the world , alienated from the management and ownership
of resources and production capitalism could not exist. So yes it is important to talk about class.
And what has been tried exactly and doesn’t work? Is the capitalism which at the very least will destroy millions through environmental disaster?
Lets also be clear what profit is exactly. The fact that money can be invested as capital and bring forth more money is not by virtue of it being money, it is the fact that it can become capital which can function in a world with a particular class relation. i.e it relies on the majority of the world’s population being dispossessed from the means of production and in times like these it relies on people experiencing the reality of this dispossession even and especially if they don’t comprehend it. This functions like the slave owners whip if you step out of line: although in this particular class relation you are free not to take part and die on the streets cut off from the means of basic subsistence rather than being whipped or tortured to death.
A business man is asked a simple question on the radio the other day ” are you making any money?’ . How money is ultimately “made’ how value is created is hidden in such simple statements as though the whole system functions on someone doing something which people want and then getting a bit more money for what they do than was out put out in the first place. The use of the majority of the worlds population which is cut off from any control of means of production, that has nothing to sell but themselves is hidden. The money plus more money is simply made form extracting surplus value which is created by people in hours worked beyond the value of the wage that people work. The hourly rate is a way of hiding this. The wage form is the price of labour power, which can sustain the worker so they can continue to be exploited. It doesn’t matter where in the world this process happens, the cheaper the labour the better. this is the meaning of the often stated plea nowadays to create competitive flexible labour markets in europe.
Have you heard the old phrase about not hanging dirty laundry in public??
I have really good neighbours, who I’m on good terms with, but I don’t want them seeing when I have sex, or when my child has accidental poo’d the bed! Besides, I am very time poor and it is so much more convenient to do things in your own home than have to walk down the street!
Patrick, that is not a very serious argument. We are not talking about people not having any privacy, it is about collectivising the domestic chores as much as possible to reduce the burden of housework for women.
Simon points to a benchmark that most can agree, but I must admit I liked the dream. Baton Rouge great until last two paragraphs, at which point a map came out where I tried to locate a hideout for my family until the apocalypse had passed.
The article is a good start, but it comes across in the classic left “capital-apocalypse” style mixed in with terminology that dates back to the 1970’s.
Here are some specific points:
Competition:
the article states that it is about profit, yet academics around the world continuously compete to be the first to achieve ground breaking new science. Their motivation is prestige, not profit. The Chinese academic system was destroyed during the cultural revolution, but even in the periods between post cultural revolution and the return to capitalism, competition was sever.
I think we are going to have to live with competition side by side planning! It is not necessarily a bad thing! there are potential ways to achieve a given task, and it is not always obvious which one is best until it is tried!
Democratic planning
Do any of you know anything about synthetic biology? because I don’t! so how can we make an informed decision about which team should get a contract to develop a new method for artificial photosynthesis (energy from the sun)? This is hypothetical but in many fields, only experts can truly interpret complex documents.
I don’t have an answer on this one. James Watson got his Nobel prize for DNA and spent the rest of his career trying to block other scientists from doing anything interesting in the field. Politics with a small ‘p’ will be a major factor in any bureaucratization process (which hit the Soviet Union). Capitalism deals with this in the survival of the fittest – bureaucratic companies go to the wall. How will we deal with this?
which frankly makes us sound like some freaky doomsday cult!
We need
Whoops… pressed the button too quick. Those last two lines they were meant to go back to the top. I was trying to say that too much of the “capital-apocalypse” terminology makes us sound like a doomsday cult.
I think this is a good page. I think it is important that people can debate on here in a focused way.
I agree with baton red at the top the platforms are a problem but for different reasons. This post by Simon starts a process of questioning the economic structure we have and our understanding of it. Questioning and understanding are different modes of operating from political promotion and what can become defensive posturing. In my view it is far more important at this stage to have as many people as possible engaged in our formation of understanding of what is happening especially in terms of the economic structure. Our relation to capital. Without this logical informed process which makes use of the expertise we have amongst us i think platforms and decisions will be made on a superficial basis. I had almost given up with left unity. Building a socialist movement form the bottom up has not been done before to my knowledge. We have a chance here to do something different.
The point about competition above raises a consideration between the difference of an ideological understanding and an understanding that takes into account the material world as it is. Competition in the sense that it takes place within capitalist economics is not so much a moral issue but the inevitable result of the dynamics of struggle between capitalists. If a particular capitalist chooses not to take part it is likely that they will no longer be a capitalist. In other words monopolies are an inevitable result of the dynamics of capitalism whatever we think of them.
” If a particular capitalist chooses not to take part it is likely that they will no longer be a capitalist. In other words monopolies are an inevitable result of the dynamics of capitalism whatever we think of them.”
Sorry.. that doesn’t make sense. Why are monopolies inevitable? In the present day, monopolies primarily exist in niche sectors where intellectual property constrains the freedom to operate of potential competitors. But even then, that is short lived and today’s big company becomes tomorrow’s scrapheap. Look at how Microsoft and Nokia are struggling!
Ending capitalism, for me, means breaking the power of the wealthy (the ruling class) to control society and to allow democratic decision taken by the people as a whole to plan and control the economy in the interests of the majority. For this is IS necessary to take over the largest, strategic and most important companies, as well as natural monopolies and utilities etc.
It does NOT necessarily mean a total snuffing out of all private enterprise and initiative or an end to all market based distribution mechanism. Deciding all distribution according to a state plan and the end of all small, medium or smaller large companies is a recipe for totalitarian state control nightmare that working people will not support, let alone middle layers or owners of small businesses.
The old adage that ‘you can’t control what you don’t own’ is not actually true. Governments routinely control what they don’t own. The key is breaking the economic and state power of the rich and the largest companies.
Big Government has never gone away, as the current depression demonstrates. Governments are bailing out the bankers though quantitative easing (QE). While QE is sensible in the current circumstance by not investing in industry directly but in banks leads to a redistribution of wealth from the poor and small savers to the super rich. It is this point of what American’s call the “socialisation of risk” that we need to dwell upon, for it undermines the most powerful argument for Capitalism – that Capitalist deserve their profit because they take risks with their money.
Now I am all in favour of all major industries being socially owned and controlled- but this does not necessary mean universal central planning. I agree with Ray G – this path, by definition, leads to a totalitarianism.
I think we should advocate the strategy proposed by the late Alec Nove in “Economically Feasible Socialism”, for some sort of mixed economy of social ownership. For while I don’t share all of Mr Nove’s appreciation of Markets, I don’t think that they can be abolished yet.
Indeed while we need to slay the concept of the “free market”; we should not go the other way and seek to abolish all markets. Indeed we should remember that Marx’s dismissive attitude toward markets were subtle . Sure the labour market under Capitalism are inherent exploitative, but this not necessary true of all other markets. And while Marx may be right that Markets alienate people from their labour – if they owe the product of their labour than it is not necessarily exploitative. That is a trade off that I am happy to make in order to avoid the tyranny of the past.
NB please forgive any spell grammar errors however I am dyslexic
`Now I am all in favour of all major industries being socially owned and controlled- but this does not necessary mean universal central planning. I agree with Ray G – this path, by definition, leads to a totalitarianism.’
You are conflating a Stalinist Command Economy where the democratic soviets have been crushed with a socialist economy based on a democratically arrived at and implemented plan. Socialism cannot work without workers’ democracy. That requires the dispropriation of the cash-hoarding, profiteering monopoly corporations that are crushing workers and small business by sucking all the activity out of the economy via their monopoly profiteering. They are now, alongside the collapse of capitalist finance the major cause of global economic catastrophe and the failure and collapse of capitalism itself. Not only will it never grow again its corpse is beginning to rot and emit poisonous gasses. Even the replacement of this tiny elite by another tiny elite by means of global war would not give capitalism a new lease of life. It has reached its limits. The monopolists are literally destroying the world economy and of course it is their super wealth that makes bourgeois democracy a formal, meaningless democracy or more bluntly a scam.
David Baton Ellis Rouge
This argument is often used – that the state plan, like an abusive husband, will be different next time.
The trouble is that I, like a battered woman, just don’t trust it. You only have to see how Leninist ‘rrrrevolutionaries’ behave in their own parties to lose all faith in a society where they have state power and total control over every enterprise (and, therefore, job opportunity) school, hospital and every other aspect of daily life. It is actually a terrifying prospect – and we would not have the excuse next time that we didn’t see it coming!!.
Yes, to common ownership and democratic control of the heights of the economy. Yes, to breaking the control of the rich over society, the economy and the state. No to giving all the power to the state. We should not overlook the desire for individual freedom, as the left so often does.
“Big Government has never gone away, as the current depression demonstrates. Governments are bailing out the bankers though quantitative easing (QE)”
There is actually more to it in the UK.. One of our big problems is that During the boom years, the huge disparity in wealth between engineering/science jobs and the city led to the latter hoovering up a large proportion of the best graduates from the big universities. To add insult to injury, London’s financial sector did not invest in the real economy in terms of venture capital. Even from a capitalist perspective, the big failure with the QE program was that it was not tied to venture investment or local business lending. Instead it has simply led to asset inflation (house prices) in London.
The Spirit Level is worth reading, understanding and supporting as a basis for a philosophy and working tool. Seems to cover many bases and is both well researched and argued.
I think we can all agree with you, Baton Rouge, in your criticism of Turbo capitalism. However I think the ball is very much in your court to explain why history won’t repeat itself with democratic soviets degenerating into totalitarianism. It is not good enough to blame it all on Stalin or Stalinists, for like dogs have flees, opportunists are ever present.
As I see it part of the problem was that so much power was invested in the Soviets. So when usurped, power was centralised and became overwhelming. Indeed part of the appeal of Stalinism was due to the failure of the Soviets. Now even if we can put this down to the civil war which saw the death of a whole ‘cadre’ of bolshie Bolsheviks who would have resisted Stalinism, surely if we go down the same path wouldn’t a civil war be inevitable?
Finally we need to ask are Soviets fit for purpose? As implied it was questionable in the twenties, I would suggest more so now. For while industries if not economies were geographically concentrated in the early twentieth century , allowing some sort of coordination at a Soviet level, this is not the case now. Even medium size companies are spread all over the place or outsource aspects of their industry. This does not easily lend itself to the Soviet model. Surely in a transitional period, at least, does not democratizing at a company level make more sense? Furthermore in this way we can avoid the centralization of power with a diversity of models of social ownership including nationalisation, municipalisation, workers cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, mutuals and Friendly Societies.
Yes, Richard F – the workplaces are a good place to pitch. However, I wonder if too much energy could be wasted trying to change existing arrangements? Maybe intensive support for the establishment of the type of businesses/setting up/running of the same would produce more, better and quicker results?
The key is a democratic movement with socialist aims. I.e a planned economy which is run by the people for the people. I think the first thing is to start to build a socialist movement. Reasoned discussion could be a useful tool. But the language of advertising promotion is endemic in political culture. Hardly surprising as it requires collective effort to move beyond the ideology that we all have to swim in.
In relation to what is being said above one point re. the ’45film ..in the Nationalizing of industries it was often the old bosses that were put in power. As a miner said things did improve a bit regarding safety but this was never workers control.
In the same way if there is a vacuum in the left we should not fill it with the same old smells which lead to a blind alley.
-apologies for metaphor ‘smells’ i was thinking of the habits of animals that feel safe in territory they know and have marked out, a structural even behavioural repetition.
`However I think the ball is very much in your court to explain why history won’t repeat itself with democratic soviets degenerating into totalitarianism.’
For democracy to work it requires mass participation just as if Left Unity is to be a democratic party it will have to have a fully engaged membership not a dues paying lip-service membership rubber stamping the `gems’ of a self-perpetuating leadership clique. If you don’t think that is possible then no wonder you cannot see how socialism would be possible.
But look in our Programme for Principled Left Unity and the Transition to Socialism the Manifesto Group has included a section on supporting and assisting in the establishment of work place committees of all grades of workers that can challenge management for leadership and argue for social ownership. We believe that the fat cat excutives appointed by the Old School Tie Network or absentee shareholders who treat British industry, government, services as their own personal pigs’ trough should be replaced by managers and leaders elected by their workforces. We believe in social ownership and workers’ democracy.
“We believe that the fat cat excutives appointed by the Old School Tie Network or absentee shareholders who treat British industry, government, services as their own personal pigs’ trough should be replaced by managers and leaders elected by their workforces. We believe in social ownership and workers’ democracy.”
Now this is essentially one of the key issues we are going to need to present in detail. Revolutions throughout history have with a few notable exeptions failed because slaves, peasants, and manual workers have not been as well trained in leadership as the ruling classes they have tried to replace.
Lets take an pharmaceutical company where there is a division of very capable technicians being managed by a chief technical officer who has been hired because of her outstanding record of drug discovery. How do you bring in democracy there? will the technicians vote one of their own?
Another case where workers democracy can fail is the Bristol Bus workers (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23795655) closed shop which prevented black people being hired in the 1970’s. Think NiMBY’s in present day town councils.
Finally in terms of bullying, in small work places, having no independent management could result in one clique bullying another clique simply because they had one extra vote. And no, it doesn’t matter how nice the society is, there will always be arseholes and idiots!
Instead, we need a systems of checks and balances:
1. A planning ministry will hit the hurdle of not necessarily knowing what is required. Prior to the iPhone, most people couldn’t be bothered with smartphones and would have given a negative requirement in any questionnaire – yet changed their mind once they saw it. Thus, such a ministry must be absolutely linked in with qualitative data mining of the blogosphere and twittersphere to determine peoples desires and needs. This is an indirect democracy – determining peoples needs not simply by what they say directly, or how they vote on a given day, but what they consciously or subconsciously ask for on a daily basis.
2. Presently senior management are weakly scrutinised by shareholders in yearly meetings. A much stronger scrutiny will be required in a planned system with yearly outputs independently audited. There will need to be an agency connected to the planning ministry, who together with shopfloor input can remove failing managers. But as per my points above, improving efficiency is not necessarily going to be popular with the workforce.
3. All working people, should they request, be given access to courses in leadership and management (in addition to any other training which is reasonable). A management position is an entirely different job – focussed on how to ensure viability and success of the work unit, and anyone fulfilling the role must be capable of achieving it. We primarily want a meritocracy, whereby we give everyone an equal chance irrespective of background and early life choices/mistakes.
4. Yes it must be absolutely possible for a manager to remove a lazy or failing worker, but that worker must have full rights to an independent tribunal if requested. It cannot be the case that individual workers become untouchable. That simply demoralises the rest of the workforce.
5. Worker democracy comes in at multiple levels. Workplaces with more than say 50 staff should have worker representation on the board. There should be elected representitives to local planning ministries who sit beside logistics, management and ‘marketing’ experts to determine effective distribution.
So sorry for the long post, but I’m trying to get people thinking. Worker democracy can only be a small part of the solution. It is not a panacea!
3.
4.
4.
3. Within a planned economy, the most important management will be performed by an economic planning agency, which will determine flows of goods in the nationalised sector, and purchasing of goods from international and remaining private companies.
Agencies will tender orders and choose companies according to capability and cost. Independent auditors will be
The original reading of workers democracy as I understood it was that governance bodies would have worker representatives onboard, but they would be a minority stakeholder. In any workplace there needs to be a carrot and a stick. It is not fair
, with planning comittees
engineering firm with a section where a
Doh. ignore the scribbles after 3. 4. 4.
“For democracy to work it requires mass participation just as if Left Unity is to be a democratic party it will have to have a fully engaged membership not a dues paying lip-service membership rubber stamping the `gems’ of a self-perpetuating leadership clique.”
Agree.
And can I assume that we are all doing everything we can now eg wherever possible supporting co-ops and mutuals in preference to being used by the big corporations?