As preface, Robin wanted to add:
I have sent Bill Lear a much fuller response to these and other
criticisms, and I have authorized Bill to make it available to
any who have a serious interest in examining the pros and cons of
participatory economics. Or, I would be happy to send the longer
response as an attachment to an email message to any who request
it from me at rhahnel at american.edu
Below my signature is the first part of Robin's response to my email summary to him.
Bill
William S. Lear wrote:
>
> Here (below my signature) are various questions and claims about
> ParEcon that arose on Doug Henwood's LBO mailing list. I have tried
> to be scrupulously accurate by quoting what people wrote directly.
>
> Bill
>
> o "Nancy Folbre ... said their vision of life was as one long student
> council meeting." (Doug Henwood)
If Nancy has said this, she has, to my knowledge, not published it. What she has said in writing (Z Magazine, July/August 1991) is she worries that a participatory economy would be susceptible to "the Dictatorship of the Sociable" and the "Let's not Piss Anybody Off" principle. Albert and I responded to both her criticisms in that same issue of Z Magazine, and on re-reading, I'll stand by our response. In a nut shell we said: 1) Better Dictatorship of the sociable than dictatorship of the wealthy, the mighty, or the intelligencia if it came down to that, but 2) We had incorporated features designed to combat this danger -- balanced job complexes to name one -- and we were very receptive to any and all suggestions about how the majority in our councils and federations might protect themselves from having their self-management usurped by a minority of the more sociable, and 3) We felt Nancy had extrapolated too strongly from some very particular personal experiences she mentioned as the basis for her fear (tenure committee meetings at UMass!) Regarding people not wanting to piss others off we pointed out: 1) Effort rating committees in our workers councils had as much if not more incentive to grade slackers down than personnel officers and supervisors in capitalist enterprises since higher effort ratings for one worker required lower effort ratings for other employees, 2) Anonymity for graders and due process to question one's accusers are simply at odds. We rank the right to due process higher than the anonymity of the shy, 3) In general, participatory economics and planning had been carefully constructed so that those who approve or disapprove proposals had no incentive to be lenient, or "liberal" and a mild material disincentive to behave in this way.
Nancy Folbre aside, is a participatory economy like one long student council meeting? No. Admittedly direct democracy involves more people in more decisions than authoritarian decision making. But for those of us who support the goal of making economic life more democratic and allowing people to make the decisions that affect their lives it seems to me this a given. So the question reduces to: Has our model of a participatory economy facilitated participation so as (a) to allow people the fullest opportunity to influence decisions in proportion to the degree they are affected, (b) while making their participation consume as little of their time and energy as possible? There are a number of specific features of how we recommended that workers and consumers councils function that are designed to do both "a" and "b." But most importantly our participatory planning procedure is one that literally involves no meetings at all! Our model is quite different than others' models of democratic planning in this respect. (Pat Devine's model of negotiated coordination is one example.) I cannot tell that any of our critics have bothered to notice this feature. In light of more specific criticisms of where and why people would be required to spend too much "meeting time" I can make no further response.
> o "It's hard to imagine any society emerging out of [a ParEcon one]
> where people do so much face-to-face meeting" and in which "delegation
> and the division of labor" are lost. (Doug Henwood)
Neither delegation nor the division of labor are lost in a participatory economy. READ MY LIPS: An economy with delegation of authority and division of labor is nonsense. We did not design and propose a piece of nonsense. There is a division of labor because each individual's job complex will contain a very few tasks -- compared to the millions of total tasks. However, nobody's mixture of tasks will be significantly more empowering than others, or significantly more desirable than others. If critics want to object to the idea of balancing work for desirability and empowerment, fine. We plead guilty. But it is incorrect to criticize us for abolishing the division of labor. We proposed no such thing. We also have delegated authority. There will be chairpeople of committees, there will be heads of work teams. There will be heads of departments and divisions who have authority to order those "under them." If I am the head of a work team and you do not obey my order in a work situation, I can put you on report and recommend you be dismissed. But what there will not be are some people who are always the order givers and others who are always the order takers in every work site in a workplace. Each person will experience both being in authority and being under another's authority in different situations and at different times.
> o Max Sawicky found ParEcon "less alienating" than "soviet-based
> planning", but perhaps just as impractical, with "Continuous sessions
> of ... committees debating the proper size of ball-bearings".
If Max can tell me who or what decides the proper size of ball bearings in a capitalist economy, I will tell him who or what decides this in a participatory economy. Then we'll see if a participatory economy wastes more time than others debating the proper size of ball bearings. More seriously, I think Max has failed to seriously look at our system of participatory planning -- that is, its actual procedures. Because I do not believe he would have made this claim if he had.
> o Justin Schwartz writes, raising several objections:
>
> I have read both of the books carefully and I think Folbre's
> criticism is dead on. Actually it's worse than that, because
> instead of meeting face to face, A&H envisage everyone as typing
> in their shopping lists into computers, which data are then made
> into a sort of local community plan request after debate,
Notice here that we do not have people meeting about this. We have people simply requesting what they want.
> the process is repeated at the regional and national levels, where
> several plans are evolved and finally voted on after more
> discussion.
Justin misrepresents our proposal here. In theory there is no need for any group to formulate alternative plans for all to voted on. The procedures of proposals from all workers and consumers councils and federations followed by revisions of indicative prices and revisions of proposals by those who would carry them out COULD be carried on until a feasible (and pareto optimal) plan was reached. But this might be an unnecessary waste of time. (Notice how we labor to save people's time from being frittered away!) Once a sufficient number of iterations have defined the plan people want -- in essence -- there is no need to further waste people's time by making all the councils and federations make more revisions. We proposed ONCE ALL BUT THE FINAL DETAILS WERE SETTLED, that THEN it would make practical sense for an iteration facilitation board to flesh out 3 or 4 ways to finalize the plan and make it fully feasible that all could then vote on. If big issues were still to be resolved the social iterative process (which Justin approves of???) would continue. Otherwise, participatory planning would resemble a democratic version of central planning which we have criticized, rejected, and suggested an alternative to.
> This means that the input is certain to be
> inaccurate, since each person will both exaggerate her own needs
> at each level and also misestimate them
We have been very careful about incentive compatibility, and would appreciate if others would take like care when making criticisms. There is no incentive for consumers to misrepresent their preferences in a participatory economy. They would only cut off their own noses to spite their faces by doing so. This is even true regarding public goods where we have eliminated the free rider problem that plagues market economies. We do not believe there is any actor in a participatory economy who has an incentive to misrepresent their preferences, but welcome contrary opinions if they are specific. Regarding consumers' ability to ask for what they want for a whole year, we made clear that we expect people to make changes, and that we have included procedures to accommodate changes that we do not believe impose any serious limitations on individual consumers. Might some consumer in a participatory economy who wants to make a dramatic change in their consumption request at the very last moment end up not getting all of what they want? Yes. But it wouldn't happen often, and not everyone got the cabbage patch doll they wanted back a few Christmases ago, if I remember correctly.
> (can _you_ shop accurately a week in advance?).
I shop for the week, and then end up going to the store every other day for more milk, or eggs, -- or actually, cookies and ice cream that I tried to believe I was going to cut down on. I will be able to do just that in a participatory economy as well. The only difference is I will be asked to estimate my annual consumption of items in advance, and will receive a kind of pre-approval for that amount based on my effort rating. In the end I'll be "charged" for what I actually consumed during the year which will differ to some extent from what I asked for.
> And the outcome will give virtually nobody what they want.
Au contraire! People will get exactly what they want.
> These problems are in addition
> to the time spent in front of a terminal guessing and lying about
> what one might want and engaging in strategic behavior to
> maximize one's own, and one's community's, preference vis-a-vis
> others.
There is no incentive to lie about one's individual preferences, as I stated above. Regarding public goods, people might consider engaging in "strategic behavior" in the following sense. If I think most of my neighbors will want more side walks while I want more swing sets in our neighborhood park, I might vote even more strongly for swings than I actually feel. Of course, my side walk loving neighbors might do the same. I know of no democratic system of public good provision that eliminates this possibility. If Justin knows one, he should tell us.
> Then there are the publicity problems about announcing
> one's preferences and having to justify them to the world.
Anyone who wants to make anonymous consumption requests -- to a
consumers council that is also anonymous and non-geographical based --
is free to do so. We were under the impression that many people might
appreciate feedback from their neighbors in a context where this can
only be "take it or leave it advice."
>
> o Peter Kilander, concurring with Justin Schwartz, claims that
> ParEcon "depends heavily on computers".
I think computers can reduce the time it takes to run a participatory
economy and also allow for more refinements and adjustments than would
be possible otherwise. But compared to other planning systems,
participatory planning actually relies less on computers than others.
The only calculations required are adding individual proposals into
aggregate proposals and comparing aggregate supply and demand for each
item. Based on the percentage excess supply or demand indicative prices
could be adjusted without the aid of computers as well. No need to
invert an economy matrix and solve a linear programming problem for the
shadow prices of resources -- as there is in central planning if it is
to have any claim to efficiency. I have discussed participatory planning
with Tamil Tigers, Sandinistas and Cubans. Lack of computers was not a
problem in any of these cases.
>
> o Justin Schwartz writes that coordinators "will have immense power in
> view of their ability to frame the alternatives from which people
> choose."
Hopefully I have explained that this is inaccurate. The members of the iteration facilitation board wield no power because they do nothing until the plan has already been essentially hammered out and agreed to. Most emphatically, they do not pose alternative plans that people choose from. They are there for an efficient mop up operation at the very end when the social iterative mechanism has already settled on the alternative people want. If anyone feared them, their role could be eliminated entirely.
As an aside, since Justin uses the word "coordinators" which is a word that Albert and I coined, he must be aware that we have been outspokenly critical of real world economies, and theoretical models that we believe will inevitably become dominated by the coordinator class -- both centrally planned and market public enterprise economies in particular. Since we self-consciously designed a participatory economy to prevent such an occurrence, it would be either ironic (or moronic) if we had done just the opposite.
> He claims that Albert and Hahnel have a "theory" of a
> "'coordinator' class" which "is essentially Djilas' "new class" theory
> warmed over with a healthy dose of good old Amerricun anti-gummint
> attitudes".
To make matters simple, I plead guilty.
> o Justin claims that Albert and Hahnel "exalt[] 'democratic' form over
> democratic substance"
Justin is likely to be correct here since I think democracy ultimately reduces to a system of decision making rules and that those who talk about "democratic substance" are playing with dynamite.