By Garnet
So the revolution is a success: now what?
So far there is no single answer. This is a problem. One can understand uncertainty regarding how the final collapse of class socities would unfold, for that is still an untried exercise and a long way off. But on the issue of the first step, this is a debate that needs to rage towards a real answer.
One concept that has been raised frequently is centrally planned economics, (usually) as a temporary transtitional period. Personally, I feel this is a step backwards.
How do you transition to a future classless society by centralizing power and planning in the hands of an even smaller group of people than capitalism does, nomatter how good their intentions?
You can’t.
The true measure of a revolution is not how it uses power to help the people, but how well it gives that power back to the workers who create it.
I would advocate that an immediate collectivisation should take place. This doesn’t necessarily mean that everything would happen overnight, but over the course of a year or two all businesses would be democratically controlled by their workers as cooperatives. In the meantime, the market itself continues, but the power is spread out to the workers themselves.
I don’t believe there is such thing as an industry that cannot collectivize this way. Yes, capitalists will resist, and yes the government can and should facilitate worker take-over businesses, but it should not take control of them itself.
Of course, this is not a final destination, and the market forces that still hold some sway will have to be replaced. “The invisible hand” can still pickpocket, bringing about disparity in this case.
But once workers have control over their firms, then workers can organize the new structure of the economy by organizing together in each sector democratically. They will construct the new infrastructure of the economy that links each sector together, and sees them cooperate towards common goals. In this way, the organization is conducted in a grassroots way by the workers for the workers. Over time, this new infrastructure replaces the market in how goods are distributed.
This is not an arguement against solidarity, either. I would be the first to espouse a common push to achieve socialism and recognize that in order to bring power to the working class, we must all work together despite our differences. But we must work together as equals.
On the other hand, a centralized economy is awfully similar to capitalism in several ways. It creates a class of people who direct an economy, and it is self-perpetuating in that those people with power are reluctant to give it up.
Centralized Economies are an appealing tool, for they offer the allure of complete control and certainty in the transition process. Unfortunately, it is that very trait that makes them nearly certain to fail. It is that very trait that moves workers in the opposite direction.
5 responses so far ↓
Alex // January 26, 2008 at 10:02 pm
You are correct that central planning is not our goal and it has certain inherent problems that make it a) inefficient and b) highly corruptible.
But this doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be used ever or that the state cannot seize some of the means of production.
While it is our goal that the workers should take over their workplaces, it is unrealistic to hope that this will happen quickly. The workers may be able to seize some resources and factories, but for the most part, the transition will take a long time. You recognize this, so I won’t dwell too much on this part.
But what he have to be clear about is that it will be necessary for the state to seize some of the means of production (maybe as much as 90%) initially for this reason: the success of workers’ rule will depend on how well the workers’ state can “bring home the bacon.” The workers will not know how to run an entire economy at first. They will be inexperienced. So it is necessary for the state to take control of some enterprises and some resources to ensure that things run smoothly until the working class seizes more resources and figures out how to run the economy efficiently.
If the people can’t be provided with adequate food, shelter, etc. people will probably assume that bourgeois rule is better because at least the bourgeoisie know how to run things. So state control is necessary during this transition period. This state control will be managed by central planning.
But there are two misconceptions about central planning that need to be cleared:
Business and the state do not have to be merged completely. The Trotskyist and Stalinist interpretations hold that the state takes complete control of everything essentially. But this complete control is closer to economic fascism than socialism. On the other hand, the Leninist view (which has been more-or-less lost in the milieu of the current Left) holds that state control and planning should be used with restraint.
From a purely economic perspective. 50+1% ownership of a company’s stock would be enough to direct it without shutting everyone else out of the loop. I believe this would be ideal when dealing with enterprises that are owned by the state.
The second misconception is that there is something magical about central planning that eliminates the rule of capital. It does not. It can direct the flow of capital to benefit the working class, but it does not eliminate the rule of capital because it does not eliminate commodity production. So it is not our goal. This is why there must be a way to achieve “escape velocity.”
Workers must immediately begin to experiment, with aid from the state, in how to run an economy without money, wages, or exchange. When this moneyless sector of the economy is ready, it will overtake the others and you will have a real communist economy, and central planning will be irrelevant.
It is also necessary for workers to have concrete democratic rights of free speech so that they may more genuinely control the central planning process.
Garnet // January 27, 2008 at 5:27 am
WordPress ate my first response so I’ll try this again:
To begin, I don’t see how worker control is unreasonable. This isn’t a final stage. The marketplace would continue to linger, as that’s what people know and understand, what would change is that workers are in control of their own workplaces, not the whole economy. Then the rest of the work is slowly begun.
It is clear that the government would have to play a role, and maybe I should have emphasized that point more clearly, however I don’t believe it should be a controlling role. In the end, 50.1 per cent owners make the decisions regardless of what 49.9 per cent thinks. It’s not that different from 100 per cent.
Clearly the government will have to take the lead in many cases to wrest the capital from the owners and facilitate worker expropriation where workers are incapable of doing so themselves. But there are plenty of examples of workers taking control of their own workplaces, even in times of great economic turbulance, and succeeding easily. The difficulty comes in taking over the entire economy and switching from the marketplace, which will take time and experimentation and the support of society as a whole.
I don’t believe worker control would cause any real economic malaise, either. In many cases, those who already do the job of running day to day operations will simply be elected to that position and accountable to their coworkers democratically rather than their boss. I believe people are capable of running the businesses they already run without being ordered around from owners, and to do it in their collective interest, as that has been shown again in Argentina. I recognize this is not a final stage, but I see it as a workable first step.
I understand we do agree on the general goal, and I understand that you do see central planning as a tool and not as a destination. I just dont’ think it’s the right tool.
I’d love to hear a rebuttal and would read it carefully, however. But as I was saying in the beginning of the post, this is definately something the entire movement has to sort out. =)
Alex // January 27, 2008 at 11:16 pm
> To begin, I don’t see how worker control is
> unreasonable.
It’s not… in the long term. But I think it_is_unreasonable to assume that the workers will be able to a) seize all of their workplaces, and b) run their workplaces so that the entire economy works, overnight.
If this had been the case, the October Revolution of 1917 would have been an immediately amazing success. But it was clear that the workers would not be able to take total control of all workplaces, and that a lot of them would have to be nationalized.
Through central planning, the state would direct the general actions of the corporations that haven’t been seized directly, and during this time, the workers wouldn’t be running things directly, but they would be gaining experience.
In short, we cannot guarantee that the transitional economy will not have to go through a period of state capitalism. In fact, history has clearly shown that it probably will.
Another thing to take into account is the natural resources like forests and water. These things will have to be utilized to feed and house the workers. And the workers will not have the consciousness or experienced required to just know exactly how to handle all of these things. So the state will have to appropriate these resources to some extent to satisfy the population, because if they don’t, people will just assume that bourgeois rule is better.
The workers have never been in a position to run an economy, and the only way for them to learn is through practice. But it is likely that the workers will not know how to run the economy on their own and would be very inefficient. While they experiment, it is necessary for the state to pick up the change and utilize the capitalist economy they have inherited to make the people happy.
> The difficulty comes in taking over the entire
> economy and switching from the marketplace,
> which will take time and experimentation and
> the support of society as a whole.
Exactly. The workers will have inherited a capitalist economy that they must direct the flow of to benefit the masses to allow time for the workers to experiment. But if the workers could directly appropriate production to satisfy the masses already, there would be no point in experimentation. The workers will not have the experience required to run the economy directly (yet). So it is clear that state planners must pick up where the workers cannot.
Obviously, it is easy for these planners to become corrupt, etc. but the problem does not come from the power itself. It comes from_unchecked_power. This is why it is essential for workers to have concrete democratic rights. Planning in the state-capitalist period would be done somewhat democratically (the planners would be accountable to the masses), but not directly (yet).
For clarity, here is the approximate flow of the transitions during workers’ rule:
1. Some things are seized by the workers and others by the state. Some things are simply not seized and are allowed to continue until they become too powerful or are seized by the workers (this makes a state-capitalist sector, private capitalist sector, and a worker controlled sector).
2. The first real transition after this will be from state-capitalism to socialism. The difference between these is that the former is handled by a bureaucracy and the latter will be handled by direct democratic planning. Yet both still utilize commodity production.
3. The final transition will be from socialism to communism, where commodity production is ended, and formal planning becomes irrelevant as there will be no formal authority or central unit.
So, from the start, you have four basic sectors: Private capitalist, state-capitalist, developing socialist, and at some point, developing communist.
I hope I made at least some sense.
Ben Seattle // April 1, 2008 at 3:18 am
Hi Alex and Garnet,
I skimmed this article and the follow-up exchange of comments when it first came out–and then I printed it for more careful reading. Because of the pressure of other work I have been unable to carefully read it all until recently.
I should say, first of all, that I consider both the initial article and the comments on it to be of high quality.
It is unfortunate that intelligent discussion of this quality on this subject (ie: what happens after bourgeois rule is overthrown in the context of a modern society with a modern economy) is so rare.
So the first step, in a certain sense, is for us to simply talk about the first step–as Garnet has done with her article. The movement as a whole (as Garnet points out) will sort out the answers to the important questions that have been raised. And we will do our best to contribute to this process.
Most discussion of these kinds of topics, unfortunately, takes place in a “religious” format. By that–I mean that various groups in the left have particular ideas and formulations which they cling to and argue for in such a way that useful discussion is often not possible. For example I have discussed some of these issues publically with Joseph Green of the Communist Voice Organization (CVO) — but most of his words (tens of thousands of them) appear to be devoted to calling me various names and misrepresenting what I say. And Joseph Green’s methods, unfortunately, are more the rule than the exception within the hard-core militant marxist left.
By contrast, Alex and Garnet do not have the advantage of the kind of marxist education that someone gets in one of these groups. But neither do they have the diasadvantage of this either.
Rather–they loook at these issues with fresh and honest eyes and try to develop a common language and a common understanding of what we can know (and what we can not) concerning how the working class will run society and what stages in economic development are likely to unfold as the working class creates a society without classes and with peace, abundance and community for all.
I will have more to say, maybe in the next few days (if not–then hopefully within the month). In the meantime I just wanted to note that I find the article and the discussion here to be encouraging.
all the best,
Ben Seattle
Alex // April 1, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I should also note that it was a mistake for me to use the words “socialism” and “communism” above.
Those words have been so muddled by “communist” regimes and “socialist” nations like Sweeden and France that they do nothing to add clarity when dealing with these sorts of topics.
What words will we replace them with? I do not know for sure. But this is something we can discuss when we all have more time.