planning

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Aug 26 13:16:33 PDT 1999


Brett Knowlton wrote:


> Doug wrote:
> >On this issue, I don't think it's very fruitful to talk at a high
> >level of abstraction.


> How's this for a start:
>
> 1) Permanent hierarchy must be avoided. Ideally the process will be
> mechanical at the top, i.e., the planning process will follow a set of
> pre-defined rules which must be adhered to

There are innumerable forms of planning (as of any other human activity) which don't work, and one of those kinds is planning planning in advance. The shape of planning (like the shape and realm of spontaneity, local decision making, national decision making, etc. etc. etc. will depend on the (now unpredictable) course of the struggle. There are a few reasonable predictions one can make. The beginning mix of planning and non-planning will prove to be all fucked up; progress in correcting glitches, errors and crimes will depend on factors we can't predict now. Things that ought to be planned won't be. Things that ought not to be planned, will be. Things that ought to be planned to begin with and then later removed from the planning process will be first unplanned than inappropriately planned.

Most socialist movement in the future will in any case be drowned in blood (and that includes the kind envisaged by Doug as well as more traditionally "revolutionary" versions). Progress is not automatic and History is not a God that promises grace to the faithful.

That is why in an earlier post I called this thread weird: attempting to establish philosophically a complex of different questions which cannot even be asked abstractly so far in advance.

Carrol



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