Also stopping by to say Hi.

Here’s a great voice, a scholar/professor with similar ideas . . . . I’ve gotten a great deal from him. Worth a look:

WSDE Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises — by Richard Wolff

bnw wrote:

There is no “produce to order”. You try to maximize the yield of the crop you planted. Everyone does the same. Sometimes crops don’t meet expectations or outright fail.

Yes, there is a produce to order here. When the sole purpose is to fulfill need, to produce use value, not make a profit, you can do just that. You’re still thinking within the context of capitalism.

Capitalism is dead and buried in this context, and absolutely none of its rules apply. It’s as if it never existed. There is no more M-C-M and exchange value. There are no more employers. There are no more employees. No one appropriates surplus value for him or herself. No one steals the production of workers for themselves, or gets rich off the backs of others. It’s all publicly owned, managed, controlled, distributed and conceived of — by the public. There is no one unified market, much less a globalized market. Local markets are autonomous, cooperative, democratic, and federated with other local, autonomous, cooperative, democratic markets.

You can’t critique this alternative accurately until you get out of the capitalist mindset. It’s like bashing a move in Chess based on your understanding of the game of Risk. The rules of Risk are absolutely, 110% irrelevant.

Communism tried it for society as a whole and it failed. Failed because it wasn’t responsive to real world conditions of weather and natural resource production and individual human want and need.

The rules of Risk are sacrosanct. Chess is a battle. Risk is war.

bnw,

You’re getting hung up on your own (false) view of how farming works in a left-anarchist setting. In reality, no one on earth makes it work better. That’s where left-anarchists started, going back two centuries, at least, if we stick to just that label (socialist, anarchist-socialist, anarchist-communist, etc) . . . and thousands of years if we don’t bother with it. Food co-ops, sustainable, small-scale farming — no one does this better than leftists. It’s just not going to be a problem.

Moving on to the rest. There is no “management.” There are no permanent hierarchies. It’s all worker/citizen managed, owned, controlled. Check out the link to the Wolff video for a good idea of what I’m talking about, though he’s mostly thinking of how WSDEs would work without it being the sole legal framework. I’m saying the entire society would be this way. No bosses. No slaves. No gods, no masters. Everyone is a co-owner. There are no employer/employee social relations. They don’t exist. So everyone is “labor” and everyone is “management.”

Workers cycle through leadership roles, via lottery, then cycle back out. The very short hierarchies are all on a rotational basis, and all subject to democratic processes. No one can establish a permanent home at “the top” and the top is barely above the bottom.

As for who decides? Again, everyone. From the town on up. Local decisions, democratically made, under general frameworks set forth in a constitution, also democratically decided.

Capitalism has the few decide for the many, and they do this for their own, extremely narrow interests, which always run counter to the vast majority’s. I think that’s insane. In this alternative, the many decide for themselves. In this alternative, there is no ownership by the few, for the few. Nothing is done to make an elite fat, happy and rich. It’s all done to provide a high standard of living for everyone. Literally everyone. No one left behind.

Free cradle to grave education, skills training, self-provisioning training (including farming), medical care, access to parks and rec, gyms, the arts, cultural venues, etc. etc. We can make it all free because there is no funding issue. No worries about deficits and debt. No taxation. Towns, regions, the nation vote on what they want and allocate unlimited digits for these projects once the votes are in.

Oh, and Russia never implemented communism or socialism. Not even close. They were stuck in the State Capitalist mode. Lenin said he needed to start there in order to drag Russia into the 20th century, and they never made it out of that mode.

(More on that later)

Also: when you ask “how would they decide this or that?” The same can be asked of any new system, including capitalism, or any new business trying to establish itself under capitalism. There are always going to be initial issues and problems as far as organization, delegating, establishing who does what, when, where, why and how — at first. That’s a given with any new system.

There is absolutely nothing inherently more problematic about a left-anarchist system in that case. It, too, would have growing pains, initial confusion about roles and duties, etc. etc. But, just like capitalist forms, it would soon get to the point where these things are ironed out and things fall into place. The worst part is the start up time. Once that’s been tackled, roles, duties, allocation of labor and resources, etc. etc. . . . become the new norm.

I think you’re viewing this as something uniquely problematic for alternatives to capitalism, and forgetting how chaotic, volatile, disruptive and confusing capitalism once was to people who had known different systems. And it would appear you’re not remembering its history of violent suppression of previous economic forms, its forced removal of people from their lands, its enclosure acts, its outright theft of land and resources, etc. In no case was capitalism introduced anywhere on earth “voluntarily,” even in Britain, where it originated.

Two excellent books on its origins:

The Invention of Capitalism, by Michael Perelman

and

The Origin of Capitalism, by Ellen Meiksins Wood.

Both are essential, seminal works, and the latter is perhaps the single best book on what makes capitalism unique, how to define it, etc.

Thanks, ER.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

WV,

I agree with you a ton on these issues, but I think — just guessing — I’m even more opposed to capitalism than you are. If I understand you correctly, you’re opposed to a certain kind of capitalism — corporate. To me, it’s just a natural evolution already contained within the system itself. Capitalism itself, IMO, leads to globalization and corporatization globally and can’t really avoid it.

It is fundamentally set up to take autonomy away from human beings, to destroy freedom for everyone but the wealthy, primarily because it’s based on slavery. It’s an outgrowth from it, and helped sustain chattel slavery in America beyond its “practical” due date. It is fundamentally all about appropriating the work of others for oneself, and then giving them back a fraction of a fraction of the value they produce, and the lowest amount they can possibly get away with. And when no one is looking — like right now in Malaysia, Burma, Thailand, China — it reverts back to actual slavery. Its internal mechanics, its inherent drive, the reason for its being, is to maximize profits for ownership only, which necessarily means paying the very least for labor — or nothing at all — possible. It means doing away with anything that stands in the way of those profits. It means extending legal protections, political protections, often by any means necessary, in order to expand market share, power, control, etc. etc.

The great Ellen Meiksins Wood, in her seminal The Origin of Capitalism, talks about this process in Britain and beyond, the way capitalism acted (often violently) to unify once disparate markets, which had the effect of destroying those previous autonomous, local markets, forcing them to join the new cancer or be consumed by it. David Harvey talks about the geography of this process, how capitalism spreads, and with it, crisis after crisis, always pushing the day of reckoning, risk, obligation, responsibility, off somewhere else.

Along with it being based on unpaid labor, it is also a classic ponzi scheme. Betting on the future. Betting on payoffs from somewhere else down the line. Making others pay the piper when bets fail — usually taxpayers.

To make a long story short, I see it has profoundly immoral, unsustainable, dangerously wasteful and ecologically destructive — “evil” in short. The “corporate” aspect of it is basically a sympton, IMO, not the cause of this. It’s just the natural extension of its already existing internal mechanics.

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Capitalism itself sparked a revolution in division of labor, which was perhaps THE single biggest reason for this skyrocketing hierarchy. Never before in human history were we separated so much simply due to our jobs, and never before in human history were those jobs broken up into hyper-specialization. Again, this is all quite recent in human history. Capitalism is the aberration, not communal groups with fairly flat hierarchical structures.

Well we’re now in the 21st century. Machines and technology replace human labor at an ever increasing rate. There is no return to the pre industrial society given a world population of 7 billion to feed, clothe, shelter, educate etc.

If we don’t radically downsize this, we won’t survive. We’re killing the planet because of our industrial expansion, pollution, waste, all of which are endemic to the capitalist system. In fact, as long as we have that system, which is “Grow or Die” and rabidly imperialistic by design, we will continue to head toward the cliff of our destruction.

Yes, the earth will go on without us. But it won’t be habitable by humans and a great deal of nature any more. We’ve already destroyed half of all wildlife just in the last forty years, for instance, and 90% of our fish stocks. Capitalism is pure poison.

Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years, says WWF

bnw wrote:

Can’t do it with a population of 7 billion and growing. Technology is needed more than ever. Best hope is a new energy technology that will allow the expansion of public works and the better allocation of natural resources and manufactured products to elevate standard of living across the globe. Or a global pandemic that drastically culls the human population threatening a return to the Dark Age.

Yes, we can do without the vast majority of what capitalism produces. And we must. It’s the most inefficient and wasteful system yet devised, primarily because it’s privately owned, based upon future sales and marketing success, promotes Grow or Die, endless market competition, the battle for survival of various businesses, which are forever collapsing, obscene levels of duplication, etc.

And even with your example of food production it has failed utterly. Tens of millions of humans starve to death now, and the richest 20% consume 85% of all resources. The bottom 80% of the world gets to choose from the remaining 15%. This obviously can never work, but it’s the norm for any system based on private control of the means of production, with a profit motive attached.

Capitalism has never worked to allocate sufficient resources to the many, because it’s controlled by the few, who seek to maximize profits for themselves. This will forever prevent sufficient distribution of goods and services, especially those we depend upon to live. When you concentrate power, wealth and access at the top, the vast majority will always lose out. The only antidote to this is disperse that power, radically. Teach self-provisioning. Go back to local economies, federated with one another. Go back to local production to the degree possible. Democratize the economy, so people have a direct, vested interest in, and control over, their economic lives.

We won’t survive unless we do.

WV,

I see that. And perhaps I’m being too “literal” about definitions. But from where I sit, even if we get to the point where you want to see things go, and I’m with you all the way, it’s not “capitalism” any longer. It’s something else. Not sure what the word would be, but it’s not “capitalism.”

Along with that, yes, you’re right. We aren’t in any position at the moment to replace the current system. But the tragedy is, we’re not even in the position to “tame” it. We don’t have the political will — or access, or resources, or power — to stop it from moving further to the right, becoming more and more “neoliberal” in country after country. So, personally, it’s even pie in the sky to talk about “reform” in this point in time. Which then leads me to think, since pretty much all discussions regarding system change are massive longshots, why not talk about (and aspire to) something that would really improve the lives of billions, give everyone dignity and autonomy over their economic life and prevent ecological catastrophe? As in, if it’s all a pipe dream, why not go big?

I’m pretty eclectic in my thinking, but if I had to choose just one “school” right now, I’d take libertarian socialist. Your favorite, Noam Chomsky, is perhaps the leading representative of that currently. But he’s coming from, as you know, a long line of left-libertarians, like William Morris, Elisee Reclus and Petr Kropotkin, who also sometimes called themselves anarchist-socialists, anarchist-communists, or just socialists. To me, none of their dreams can be realized under the capitalist system, and we can’t “tame” our way there, either. It really does need to be replaced. Because, fundamentally, capitalism is all about controlling the work of others and profiting from that work. It’s all about, at its core, ownership — of humans, goods and services, resources, the earth. From where I sit, I just can’t conceive of any kind of human emancipation that includes people having that ability — to own the production of others, their time, their bodies, their autonomy, even if it’s just eight hours a day. And I can’t see how private ownership of the means of production, which necessarily includes resources and the earth, could ever lead to any liberation for humans, and it’s just not environmentally sustainable.

Anyway, hope all is well, and thanks again for introducing me to those other writers.

Yet your solution is to huddle small groups of the desperately poor to locate their skills and resources to starve together in non egalitarian agreement?

Huh? I honestly don’t even know what that means. One of THE central tenets of the alternative is egalitarianism. And no one would starve. Everyone would have food and all of their needs met. That’s the point. That would be THE focus, rather than the “creation of wealth” for a few.

See, the real problem, when it comes to poverty, inequality, hunger and the rest IS the mal-allocation and the mal-distribution of goods and services by the few, instead of the many. The control of those resources by the few means the many are an after-thought and never the focus. The focus is how much money can the few make, on the backs of the many, and if that means concentrating those goods and services primarily among the already rich — which is how capitalism works — then so be it.

If, however, you change to a system where EVERYONE has an equal share in ownership, equal rights, equal voice, and the economy is fully democratized, you’re simply not going to have 80% of the world forced to pick from the remnants left over by the richest 20%, with the richest 1% and above calling all the shots.

Again, the richest 20% consume 85% of all resources. Alter the way we distribute the total, and no one goes hungry. Make it match up, and no one goes hungry.

You have a room filled with 100 people. You have 100 apples. If 20 people get 85 of those apples, then 80 people have to fight over the remaining 15. But if you distribute one apple per each person . . . . . etc. etc.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Billy_T.