> From: James Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [PEN-L:10349] more planning and democracy I'm pacing myself with JD; otherwise I'd never be able to keep up with him. > Max titled his missive on this subject "The Plan Boss, the Plan" as an > effort to introduce some humor. I am not humor-impaired, but it took me a > couple of days to get it. The problem is that I'm TV-deprived, especially By my lights, the fact that you remembered it for two days makes it a successful joke. > with respect to the 1970s and early 1980s. I never saw the "Brady Bunch," > "the Partridge Family," or "Fantasy Island." It is to the last that Max > refers: there's a little fellow, whose name I've forgotten, who yells "The That was Tatoo, played by Herve Villachaise (sp?), who has since left this veil of tears. > Plane, Boss, the Plane!" To which his boss, a mathematician if my memory > serves me well, responds: "The Hyperplane, Underling, the Hyperplane!" Actually the boss would never have used the term 'underling,' since he maintained a more noble bearing. > . . . > Max is >>still utterly unconvinced, at any > rate, of the following, which is what I think we have been arguing about: > > >>* that democracy facilitates planning (which is different from the > proposition that whatever planning we have *ought* to be informed by > democratic participation);<< > > For your consideration, one way to organize planning that would allow > democracy to facilitate it: > > 1) democratic control over the enterprise helps keep the managers honest > and also promotes morale and thus productivity. The former (say, embodied Sure, but that has nothing to do with planning. > in the ability to fire managers) encourages the rank and file to trust the > managers in their dealings with the planners. The latter encourages But the issue is not workers trusting managers, but enterprises (workers and managers, abstracting from the internal hierarchy) subsuming their interest in the plan. I don't see how democracy within the enterprise (which is a good thing under any circumstances, in and of itself) has an important bearing on the relation between the enterprise and the center. > production, which makes the planning process easier (as opposed to the > "economics of scarcity" which reigned under the old USSR's planning > scheme). > > 2) in addition to various generally-accepted rules and regulations which > would apply to all enterprises in order to encourage the communication of > accurate information to the planners, it seems reasonable to presume that a You treat this casually, but it is the crux of the problem. Calculation is susceptible to technological advance (though the magnitude of calculation and information involved still dwarfs existing computer capacity, in my view). The problem is getting accurate information and having the plan's instructions carried out without the eye and hand of God behind every economic agent. > . . . > 6) all of these elements are made easier with simpler and more automatic > methods for making planning decisions (of the sort that Albert & Hahnel > write about). Re: my 'spaghetti' charge, this seems to contradict all the emphasis on democracy. > >>* that individuals and organizations will act much more selflessly under > socialist democracy;<< > > . . . > I was proposing and predicting that socialist democracy allows people to > act on the social values that they cannot act on when atomized, when > relating to each other only through the market. Rather than abandoning > self-interest, I hope that socialist democracy would allow people a more > _mature_ conception of self-interest. I hope so too, but I have doubts. Doing away with capital ownership doesn't do away with worker/enterprise/community/industry self-interest. It may even exacerbate it. The market atomizes society because property rights facilitate the pursuit of self-interest, I guess. (If it isn't obvious, I haven't read marx in about 25 years, though I still have my pristine set of Capital and Theories of Surplus Value, Int'l Publishers, natch). Instead we will have new political rights which people will reach for to the same end. This calls the mind the folk wisdom about academic quarrels -- that they are so vicious because so little is at stake -- and suggests that with less well-defined rules of engagement (political rights being more elastic than property rights), warm and fuzzy feelings towards the Plan may not be forthcoming. > . . . > In closing, Max writes: >> My point in noting the invocation of markets to > distribute consumer goods is that my questions about allocation have been > met, but not answered, by the use of market devices or democratic > procedures, neither of which contains any hint of the content of a plan, > much less why said content would be commendable on grounds other than that > the people somehow or other decided it. The buried implication seems to be > that unbridled democracy is a good, in and of itself or for its own sake. > To me such a premise is moralistic and ideological, rather than > analytical.<< > > If you don't think democracy is good in and of itself, you're not much of a > socialist. As for "unbridled," I believe that it's for the people to decide I may not be much of a socialist, except to the 99 percent of the population to my right, but the point was that a moral precept which I don't disagree with (e.g., democracy is good etc.) is not an explanation of how economic outcomes are facilitated by planning are facilitated by democracy. > how to bridle their democracy (and I already explained how they are likely > to decide to limit it). We can't rely on some elite to do it for them, > since the elite could (and likely will) set themselves up as a privileged > class. > > The point of planning is to allow more complete democracy. I think the point of planning is to improve economic outcomes (social efficiency), whereas the point of democracy is to ensure justice. Fair-minded people can commit economic blunders, while planners can be unjust. You seem to be close to the following formulation: we need to destroy the political power of the capitalist class (e.g., the d of p) because it is impossible to domesticate this power under bourgeois democracy to the point where justice is secured. Planning is not, then, about economics (social efficiency); it's really about equity. This dovetails with your concentration in all your posts on political arrangements pertaining to democratic participation and your neglect of the normative economic principles supported by a planning process, democratic or otherwise. Cheers, MBS =================================================== Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===================================================
