Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 19:28:26 -0700 From: "Gar W. Lipow" <lipowg at sprintmail.com> Reply-To: lipowg at freetrain.org Organization: FreedomTrain X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: DSA Net <dsanet at quantum.sdsu.edu>, LBO talk <LBO-talk at lists.panix.com>,
Pen-l <pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu> Subject: Fwd:Winning Socialism Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
The following is an exerpt from Robin Hahnels "IN DEFENSE OF PARTICIPATORY ECONOMIC". Although it deals with strategy for winning Parecon, the particular form of socialism he favors, I think it is relevent to all socialists.
No Way To Get There From Here?
... But even if a participatory economy is both technically and humanly feasible, it is only of academic interest if there is no way to get there from where we are. Besides being humanly feasible, there must be a feasible transition from today's economies based on competition and greed to a system of equitable cooperation. The march may be long, but there must be a trail that leads from here to there.
We know a democratic economy will not result from a non-democratic political process. If the history of twentieth century Communism proves nothing else, it proves this. Only a social movement committed "body and soul" to democracy and justice in all spheres of social life, comprising at least a third of the population, and supported by at least another third of the population, can establish a participatory economy. This means the solid beginnings of a system of equitable cooperation that won the approval of an overwhelming majority of the population must be established during decades of struggle. But this is precisely the democratic process that can lead to a participatory economy. Those who are sufficiently oppressed or disgusted by the economics of competition and greed to struggle for the economics of equitable cooperation must demonstrate a "living proof" of the possibility and desirability of an economy based on those principles. That is also how they could win the approval of another third of the population. We always assumed a transition could require many decades of blood, sweat, and tears with no guarantees. But, for us, that is a better prospect than another 500 years of greed and exploitation.
Please notice that the third of the population that actively participates in the movement for social change does not impose a participatory economy on the rest of the population. Only when there is another third that votes along with the diehards to take the plunge, would a democratically elected government have a mandate to set up a participatory economy. While history indicates most citizens who disagree with their country's economic or political system usually do not choose to leave, our policy advice to such a government would be to allow who did wish to emigrate to country with an economy more to their liking, to do so. In that way, all who began the process of developing a national economy of equitable cooperation would be doing so voluntarily albeit with different levels of commitment and reservations. But once again, what does the beginning of such a trail look like?
Make no bones about it: many current trends are bleak. Mindless equation of free market outcomes with efficiency and freedom in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, callous reductions in minimal programs for the needy and elderly, corporate merger madness, desperate scrambling to consolidate international trade blocs, worship rather than resentment of power and privilege, and a wholehearted embrace of social Darwinism in racial, class, and gender forms, all make late twentieth century US capitalism a closer relative of the Robber Baron capitalism of a hundred years ago than its "kinder and gentler" post New Deal cousin. Meanwhile, understandable disillusionment with non-capitalist economies in the former Soviet Bloc, combined with unavoidable naivete about capitalism, promise a painful learning curve for the inhabitants of the second world, most of whom are finding themselves joining the third world rather than the first world, as they had hoped. Last, but not least discouraging, growing absolute as well as relative poverty is accelerating social dissolution in much of the third world. Obviously, none of this is moving us closer to democratic and equitable economic cooperation.
Moreover, we can find no solace in old left doctrines of inevitable collapse. Many twentieth century progressives sustained themselves emotionally and psychologically with false beliefs that capitalism's dynamism and technological creativity would prove to be its weakness as well as its strength. Grandiose Marxist crisis theories -- a tendency for the rate of profit to fall as machinery was substituted for exploitable living labor, or insufficient demand to keep the capitalist bubble afloat as productive potential outstripped the buying power of wages -- buoyed the hopes of the faithful in the face of crushing defeats of progressive causes. And less ideological reformers were still affected by the myth that capitalism organized its own replacement. Unfortunately, none of this was never true. Any more than it was true that public ownership and central planning would eliminate classes and solve people's economic problems, or that incremental social democratic reforms would add up to a new economic system, superior to capitalism.
What is true is that capitalism either will not, or cannot satisfy essential human needs for the majority of people on the planet. Capitalism will not satisfy the need for basic economic security for most of the third world and a growing underclass in the advanced economies. Capitalism cannot satisfy the need for self-managed, meaningful work that an increasingly educated populace demands. Capitalism cannot satisfy needs for community, dignity, and economic justice. And capitalism cannot keep itself from devouring the environment, or generating an international climate that fosters conflict and war instead of peace and cooperation. Moreover, the new Robber Baron capitalism that is currently unfolding virtually unconstrained on a global scale, gives every indication of escalating the pace of human emiseration and environmental degradation, which means that most people will have to struggle harder than their parents to meet their economic needs.
Unfortunately, capitalism does not nurture the seeds of its own replacement in the way many twentieth century progressives hoped it would. Capitalism fosters commercial values and behaviors, rationalizes exploitation, and teaches myths about its own desirability and inevitability. The transition to a participatory economy consists precisely f dispelling myths about capitalism's supposed virtues, challenging any and all forms of exploitation, rejecting ommercial values, and developing efficient democratic and cooperative behavior patterns despite the fact that these are penalized not rewarded by market competition. So there is less help here than our predecessors believed, leaving more hard swimming against the current. Enough of the bad news. Where can our "Long March" begin?
Pre-Capitalist Cultures of Cooperation: The transition will be quite different in different countries. In many third world settings strong cooperative traditions still remain and can be built upon as the Zapatistas have done in Mexico and the ounders of the Grameen Bank have done in Bangladesh. It is nonsensical for progressives to denigrate pre-capitalist cultures and applaud when capitalism replaces older cooperative institutions with competitive behavior patterns, as twentieth century, Eurocentric progressives often did. Important elements in many pre-capitalist cultures should be protected and built on before they are destroyed.
Third World Immiseration: Marx's prophesy of economic emiseration did not prove true for the first world. But capitalism has never delivered sustained growth, much less sustainable economic development in the periphery, and the prospects for countries that fail to extricate themselves from the increasingly exploitative international division of labor the powerful capitalist centers are currently organizing, are more bleak than ever. Junior status in the global capitalist system is hardly an attractive prospect as we enter the twenty-first century and the juggernaut of neoliberalism is turning "emerging markets" into casino economies that serve the interests of the international financial elite both when they soar and when they crash, but emiserate the majority of the population during both boom and bust. Consequently, the necessity of meeting minimal economic needs of the majority of the populace, and the negative track record of capitalism in the periphery will be the strongest allies third world progressives can count on in their battle against international capital and local elites.
Consequently, there is every reason to expect third world movements to lead the opposition to global capitalism in the twenty-first century as they did during much of the twentieth century. Which is not to say that first world activists should concern themselves only with solidarity work, or wait for the "peasant periphery" to surround and capture the "capitalist center." Abdicating responsibility for organizing oppressed first world constituencies was one of the strategic mistakes of the New Left we must learn to avoid in the century that comes. But organizational and intellectual leadership during the transition to equitable cooperation will certainly be strong in the third world.
A Legacy of Basic Need Provision: It is not so long ago that citizens in the second world enjoyed adequate universal health care, education, and public services, and secure, if not meaningful employment. And despite intense international propaganda and financial threats, wholesale privatization has proved difficult and largely degenerated into lawless barbarism. All this helps second world progressives organizing resistance to bitter IMF recipes. The major obstacles are the negative legacy of non-capitalist institutions, and ideological disarray among second world progressives. But as the downside of subordinate capitalism becomes ever more apparent, and as second world progressives make clear that they stand for an economy that allows more freedom and greater opportunities for popular participation than capitalism, these liabilities should diminish. In the second world our participatory model has the political advantage of being easily distinguishable from central planning and avoiding the contentious problem of assigning ownership of economic assets among the populace.
Unions: Union membership and political strength are at their lowest since World War II. Conditions for progressive organizing in the US union movement have not been this favorable for fifty years. Say what? Perhaps because things had gotten so bad, union leadership has embraced a program of revitalization with tremendous potential.
The AFL-CIO has committed unprecedented resources to organize the unorganized prioritizing minorities, eomen, and workers in traditionally non- union sectors. The energy and enthusiasm at the Organizing Institute is one sign that this is not all hot air.
The AFL-CIO has embraced a new educational program called Common Sense Economics.The goal is to educate its entire membership about why and how the US economy is not serving their interests and what they can start to do about it. The projected scope and depth of the campaign is astounding, and the content of the curriculum is more radical and hard hitting than I would have ever thought possible.
The generation of union leadership from the Vietnam War era has largely replaced the old Cold Warrior leadership at the same time the Cold War has ended. It is now easier to preach radical anti-capitalism and militancy in unions without being red baited than at any time in our life times.
Union leadership is less hostile to political activity outside the Democratic Party, more critical of centrist Democratic Party politicians, and more aggressive at punishing Democrats who fail to vote pro-labor than at any time in recent memory.
Labor led the unsuccessful fight against NAFTA, the successful fight against Fast Track, and shows no sign of relenting on this critical issue.
Clearly the union movement should be a high priority for progressive activism in the years ahead. But shouting louder that profits are too high and wages too low, that the ratio of CEO salaries to workers wages in the US is obscene, and to make a long story short, that the corporate political agenda sucks, isn't going to be enough to revitalize American unions. More than anything else, revitalization hinges on the union movement once again becoming the hammer of economic justice. Unions must teach their members that nobody deserves to be paid more than they are -- unless they work harder and make greater personal sacrifices. Unions need to teach their members that as long as wages are determined according to the law of supply and demand in labor markets, members can't expect their unions to do more than temporarily reduce the degree of economic injustice. Unions cannot become a moral hammer for justice until they believe, teach, and mean that only effort deserve reward, and that everyone everywhere deserves to be rewarded according to the economic sacrifices they make. Wobblies believed, taught, and lived by that code when they organized in the labor movement early in the century. Rank and file socialists believed, taught, and lived by that code when they worked in the labor movement in the thirties and forties. Of course organizing the unorganized is a critical priority to reverse the downward trend in unionization of the work force. But we don't have to wait on new organizing successes to teach present union members what economic justice is and is not. This is not ground that should be difficult to reconquer. The first step is to clear our own heads of cobwebs and relearn how to preach to the choir. In the advanced economies unions still provide institutional space for strengthening the "hammer of justice," and their survival largely depends on whether or not they decide to re- tackle this task.
Cooperatives: The culture of capitalism is firmly rooted among citizens in the advanced economies. Most employees, not just employers believe that hierarchy and competition are necessary for the economy to run effectively, and that those who contribute more should receive more irrespective of sacrifice. And why shouldn't people believe this? Even if you feel you haven't gotten a fair shake, or that people born with a silver spoon in their mouth don't deserve what they get, few are likely to reject a major linchpin of capitalist culture on their own. We should not fool ourselves that capitalism teaches people about its failings, or shows them how to live non-capitalistically -- quite the opposite. The only sense in which capitalism serves as midwife for its heir is by forcing people to learn to think and live non-capitalistically in order to meet the needs it leaves unfulfilled. It falls to progressives to learn and teach others how to do this. And there can be no mistake about it, this is a monumental task. We can ill afford to repeat the error of our twentieth century predecessors who failed to face up to the magnitude of this task, looking instead for short cuts and excuses for why it would not be necessary.
But where can a culture of equitable cooperation grow in modern capitalism? Thousands of producer and consumer cooperatives exist in the United States. Some were organized by employees who didn't want to lose their jobs when their employer no longer found them profitable. Some were organized by independent farmers to withstand competition from agribusiness. Some were created by idealistic owners who relinquished ownership to their employees. Some were organized by consumers who couldn't get credit from capitalist banks, and others by consumers who wanted to eat food that capitalist supermarkets wouldn't provide.
The past ten years has witnessed a resurgence of cooperatives as governments at every level have abandoned social services and businesses have abandoned necessary, but unprofitable activities. Unlike cooperatives created thirty years ago as an outgrowth of the counterculture of the 1960s, the recent wave of cooperative formation is larger, less self-consciously progressive, and more driven by necessity. The possibility of linking producer and consumer cooperatives is particularly attractive. One example received national attention recently because of the research of an academic nutritionist. She pointed out that the nutritional quality of school lunch programs could be dramatically increased by replacing processed foods with locally grown vegetables and fruits, provided school cafeteria staffs were taught how to prepare seasonal menus. At the same time, advance contracts for local growers could provide much needed economic security, provided they organized into cooperatives. Of course the largest and most advanced example of a successful network of industrial cooperatives is the well known Mondragon "experiment" in Spain which has survived and grown for almost fifty years and no longer deserves its "experimental" title.
The major problem is not lack of cooperatives, but failure to develop cooperative principles and practices within them. Progressives need to help sustain and expand self-management practices and develop more equitable internal wage structures within producer cooperatives. We need to create new organizational procedures that help members participate in consumer cooperatives without heavy burdens on their time. Cooperative members need to be taught how the competitive market environment limits the abilities of their cooperatives to deliver economic democracy and justice. Then, when this ground work has been laid, progressives need to start to link cooperatives together into networks that relate internally according to participatory rather than competitive norms. After strengthening cooperative principles and habits inside existing cooperatives, progressives can try to connect them into networks that function as participatory islands within the larger competitive economy.