>Either I'm really lousy at explaining my position, or people read their
>preconceptions into my words. Probably some of both going on.
yep.
>Where did I say anything about technocratic administration? If anything I
>said this should be avoided.
>
>These rules should most emphatically _NOT_ be pre-defined, unquestioned and
>depoliticised. This was an assumption you made, not a position I stated.
>In fact, I support exactly the opposite - the rules should be subject to
>implementation and change through the (democratic) political process.
>
>>>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
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
there is where you said yourself that rules are pre=defined. yes, they may have been democratically decided on and they may be open to change. this does not, tho, necessarily prevent them from become instantiated in such a way as to be naturalized. moreover, this is exactly the technocratic logic of bureaucracy. bureaucracy operates according to a set of pre=defined rules that have either been politically or scientifically determined as the best and/or objective means for achieving a given end. authority is in the rules. they, as you say yourself,
>>>must be adhered to in order to take the human
>>>factor (and thus authority) out of the planning process.
that is exactly why bureaucracy emerged in the first place: to take the power of charismatic leadership which operates according to power as embodied in a person or persons to one in which authority is embodied in the rules. both are forms of authority. charismatic leadership is authority embodied in a person who's rule is seen a natural because of birth or class position or family. as with aristocracy, authority passed from god to king to nobility. bureacracy emerged w/ enlightenment thought as an ostensibly more democratic means of legitimating such authority thru the supposed objectivity of science which, as you must know, itself operates according to pre-defined rules which must be assumed and taken for granted if we are ever to get the work of science done rather than standing in a corner gazing at the lint in our navels and just-a-wonderin about it all. the mistake is to assume that the political is in the human and it's absent in 'the rules'. it's not absent at all.
so, it all may be solved by the qualifications you offer as to what you meant to say. weber's work others suggest that it's not.
now, anyone who paid attn to my convo w/ ken on bernstein and habermas will recognize that i took your position in that debate and said what you say. as i said, i'm pressing for clarifications and answers
>I don't know anything about Weber or Lacan, so I don't know what you're
>referring to. However, eliminating private property will certainly not
>eliminate the need for administrative duties of one sort or another. It
>doesn't even have to make things more equitable. But, you can't keep
>private property and achieve an egalitarian system. The hope lies in
>finding institutions which, after private ownership of the means of
>production is eliminated, do produce an egalitarian society.
yes, and this is where i try to make my escape as well. i said at the tail end of some other thread and referred to comments you'd made on a similar topic re workplace democracy that i think that the issue is changing institutional imperatives. one thing i think we need to worry about is the idea of individualistic, rational choice decision making. how to accomplish that is another problem.
>How is this a critique of democratic planning? People behave in their
>self-interest. Everyone wants to better their situation. So what?
that is a dangerous assumption. that is assuming a human nature that is historically constituted and particular to capitalism. it hasn't always been the case and is not now the case that people only ever operate in their self interest. adam smith even argued this and wrote his treatise, _a theory of moral sentiments_ arguing that rational choice decision making in pursuit of one's self interest was a logic --a set of rules--that worked best in the cap. market but not elsewhere. he offered a kind of tripartite system of checks and balances, very much a part of scottish enlightenment thought in which there were different spheres operating according to different moral logics, the state, the market, civil society.
as for an empirical example that feminist offer to counter your claim that people act in their self interest: do we think that, ideally, family and friendship relationships should operate according to the pursuit of self-interest?
chicago school economists argue that it should and they set about trying to explain how people do operate in this way and yet they always run up against a steel wall because it turns out, much to their consternation, that people don't. so why is that?
This
>will be true in a socialist society just as it is in a capitalist one.
>This is in no way an argument against socialism or an argument for the
>market, it is simply a statement of how people behave.
but that statement rests on a whole set of assumptions that can't be empirically proven and do not accurately reflect how people do in fact behave. that's where chicago schoolers had to come up with the concept of optimizing rather than fully satisfying and achieving one's self-interest. apparently, not even complete and full understanding of all information at hand leads ppl to maximize their self interest, they merely optimize it.
the trouble i have is that i don't think that it's private property alone that is the problem. it is precisely the notion of self interest, the language of incentives and so forth that are problems. why are people incented to do one thing and not another? what are the hidden and very political assumptions that undergird these claims. one reason why this is a concern is that there as long been a feminist and marxist critique, among others, regarding the language of self-interest, choice, and incentives. moreover, one need only look at the way self interest operates in the polity to see that this isn't exactly a great system since what we so often decry is interest group plurilism dominated by single interest groups pursuing singular self interests.
indeed, peter kilander, if you're reading, you might want to jump in here w/ regard to the author you interviewed not too long ago. i'd be interested in how you make connections between what he had to say wrt to political life and citizenship and what i gathered from your convo with him was a bit of a rejection of the idea that democratic participation needed to rest on something other than self-interest. [to those familiar w/ this line of thought: uh huh, i'm also aware of the drawbacks of my competing concerns here.]
>I wish I could have a conversation about this, as opposed to email - it is
>much easier to flesh things out that way. Its too difficult to explain and
>discuss the whole idea on this list.
frankly, over beers and various types of hard liquor and a mimosa or two would be even better. [right rob!!] but alas.... i don't mean to frustrate you. it's just a topic that i'm interested in and one, in fact, that ken and i wrangled over a bit more abstractly but there i offered an account of workplace dem'y not much different from yours. i'm taking a different tack here because this is such a stumper and i've gone back and forth for many years trying to figure out how it's possible to put these ideas into practice. i can't put it all into one post either. so i guess patience is in order eh? but if i get to be too much of a pest i'll stop. deal?
kelley
>Brett
>
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