File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9712, message 15


Date: Tue, 02 Dec 1997 18:30:55 +0000
From: "João Paulo Monteiro" <jpmonteiro-AT-mail.telepac.pt>
Subject: M-I: Communist society: a dialogue (4 of 4)



--------------D18C9EEE253CD7937D5D23D9

Ken:
>In your description, you take note of the fact that the "system" or
"information treatment
>device" can't alone solve problems. There must be "experts, or any
informed people" who
>"read this data and make their analysis". This is the administrative
apparatus, or
>organizational structure, or whatever. It doesn't matter what name you
give to it, you have in
>fact given a structure to this society. The computers don't really make

much difference except
>to allow faster collection of data and faster discussion of it. If the
computers could replace the
>panel of experts, they would make a big difference to the issue. But
the computers can't
>replace the need for human intervention and human judgment. Only if you

could eliminate the
>need for the experts or for the intervention of informed people (i.e.
people having more
>information about the subject or more interest in it, than the mass of
people), could you get
>closer to direct democracy.

>Perhaps your idea is that these panels of experts or informed people
differ from an
>administrative apparatus in that there could be both formal and
informal panels, there can be
>competing panels, anyone who is especially informed can enter the
panel, etc. etc. But all this
>is similar to my idea of an administrative apparatus. Anything you can
describe for your
>panels can be duplicated in my idea of an administrative apparatus,
because it is simply a
>question of a different name for the same concept. (It is not a
question of whether anyone
>trusts my assurances about this, any more than it is a matter of
whether anyone trusts your
>assurances. Whenever there is a relatively free system, various of
these safeguards are
>already used--the question is to find the economic conditions under
which they will be
>effective.)

>The point is that you recognize that, while people can switch from one
occupation to another,
>at any one time there are some people who are informed on electrical
generation, others who
>are informed about chemicals, and still others who are doctors, etc.
The fact that there are no
>class barriers to switching operations doesn't mean that everyone does
everything at the same
>time. Hence your talk of "informed people".


In my view, there will only be informal panels of experts, to use your
terms. So, in my opinion, I
don't think they add up to form any kind of apparatus. The thing is,
everybody can and will become
an *expert* on something. Of course, there will be people more talented
than others. Solely on this
base, some people will therefore tend to specialize on little and
simpler tasks and some others on
more global or complex problems and issues. Everybody will thus
naturally find his own field and
range of competence and *authority* (in the sense found by Engels in the

gentile society), based
solely on the quality of his own ideas, opinions and craftsmanship. The
sum result of all this will be
kind of an administration of everything by everybody.

No issues, however, will be decided by the *experts*, let alone
restricted panels of them. Under
communism, social matters are much too serious to be left for the
pernicious tyranny of experts. The
*authority* of the experts will be restricted to the (free and open to
everyone) discussion of the
problems and the selection of alternative solutions. There, the
arguments will fight each other openly
and may the best win the day. Once, by this process, a clear picture of
the problem is formed, the
alternative solutions must be expressed in a clear and comprehensible
way for everybody. Then the
issue is taken to a vote where every interested person (experts or not)
will have a single vote.

This is all very sketchy yet, but I think we can have direct democracy
on all fundamental issues,
however complex they might be.


Ken:
>The issue you raise of "democratic stress" is indeed very important.
But filtering the
>information, deciding what is major and what is minor, and so forth, is

not a mere technical
>function. It is not automatic. Whoever does this is really making major

decisions. So long as
>this isn't done by everyone (which would go against the whole idea of
filtering and which is
>impossible if you consider the millions and millions of economic
decisions that have to be
>made each year), it is being done by some form of organization. People
might vote on what
>kind of organization would do the filtering or whether mistakes had
been made in the
>filtering, but then they are voting on the type of organization to be
used and on its
>performance, rather than deciding all the issues by direct democracy.


The issue of filtering information is indeed a very important one. Let
me very clear here. All filtering
that is not totally free and exclusive self-filtering is absolutely
intolerable. No organization, however
democratic, filters anything to anybody. Everybody will have absolute
and total sovereignty over
what issues he/she chooses to be aware and informed of. Since nobody
(not even *God* or
Laplace's monster) can possibly receive and analyze all the information
available on the global
reseau, this is the only solution. It’s not just that central planning
is coercive and ineffective. As
society gets more and more complex, it will be virtually impossible.

How filtering will work is actually quite simple. Everybody will simply
*tune in* to whatever is of
more direct concern to him/her. They will participate in the forums and
the decisions taking place
there. Of course, since there is a high degree of social consciousness,
the more important and global
problems will tend to be followed by everybody.


Ken:
>One ends up with a complex system to decide the claims of different
areas. And yet, this
>system of deciding issues is irrelevant, unless it is assumed that the
decisions will have some
>binding effect. If every binding decision requires a state and a
repressive apparatus to enforce
>it (which I *don't* agree will be the case in classless society), then
so does the decision to
>enforce the veto on all relevant factories and enterprises. Moreover,
such decisions as those
>to ban DDT because it is poisoning various areas, have to be enforced
on health
>organizations and pesticide producers hundreds or even thousands of
miles away.


This is a really important issue: how to enforce bannings. I would say,
by pure means of spontaneous
social reprobation. You must remember that in a communist society, all
work is voluntary. If you
don't want to do nothing, you can lay down and do nothing. You will have

all the socially available
means of consumption and recreation at your disposal just the same. You
don't get *richer* out of
your productive initiative. If people work, it is by natural compulsion,

by the pure desire to be useful,
and also (and most importantly) by a desire of social recognition.
People will want to be admired by
their work. It is the expression of one's capacities and personality. So

it is a very weird phenomenon
indeed for a person (or a group of persons) to engage in a productive
activity only to be universally
despised and condemned. Nobody would use their products. It would be
proof of a seriously
deranged personality. I wouldn't say these people will be locked away,
for there probably won't be
any mental asylums left. Everybody is entitled to his own madness, as
long as it's not socially harmful.
But they will surely be a very marginal phenomenon. On the limit, a
neighborhood collective might
decide to dismantle and seal their hazardous and useless factories.
There won't be any need for a
repressive apparatus to take care of these cases.


Ken:
>The point I am raising is this. You try in theory to avoid organization

and simply have each
>individual relating to an almost invisible information network which
functions automatically
>without human intervention. But each time you consider a concrete
problem, you seem to add
>another layer of organization to your future society in order to deal
with it. In theory, you
>want to have an "invisible hand". In practice, you end up with the need

for *conscious human
>intervention* (and this requires organization) to solve one serious
problem after another.


When I talked of an *invisible hand*, this was kind of a private joke.
In fact, all productive decisions
are *conscious human interventions*. There is no anarchy of production.
People will have a very
clear picture of the current social needs and freely decide to satisfy
them. No *organization* (in the
sense of superior direction) will be required for this. Lenin's national

wide (in our case, world wide)
accounting and book-keeping is performed and permanently kept current
over the internet, or its
successor. We could call it Vladimir Lenin Resources Data House, or
something like it. Everybody
has access to this information. It will available to all, as will an
analytical description of all socially
expressed demands. (In fact, we already have software capable of doing
this. Capitalists use it - on
their “lean and mean” enterprises - to keep their inventory costs at a
minimum and provide a quick
reply to shifts in consumer demand.)

When people decide what to do, they will bear this in mind. Planning is
made by the sum of all
individual or otherwise autonomous productive decisions, for these will
be all socially *conscious*
ones. Everyone takes upon himself the role of planner and plan executor.



Ken:
>The need for coordination and an administrative apparatus in the future

society is something
>referred to by Marx and Engels; it springs from the very nature of
large-scale production.
>They did distinguish between the state and repressive authority on one
hand and that type of
>authority that would exist in a future society on the other. This
means, by the way, that they
>differed from the anarchists not just in their way of getting to the
future society, but in their
>picture of it as well. The anarchists tend towards the view of a
glorified society of individual
>producers; the Marxists, to a giant co-operative society based on
large-scale production but
>liberated from its capitalist chains.


>From what I have depicted above, appearances to the contrary, there are
no *individual producers*
in my communist society. It's rather a cooperative society in the
Marxist sense, but one in which the
information necessary to coordinate it flows *all around* multilaterally

and not in a pyramidal
scheme. It works perfectly coordinated, but people in it are not just
pieces in a machine whose
general direction and purpose escapes them. They know the all picture
and move consciously within
it.

Ken:
>Engels draws the conclusion that "it is absurd to speak of the
principle of authority as being
>absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely
good. Authority and
>autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases

of the development
>of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the
social organisation of the
>future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the
conditions of production
>render it inevitable, we could understand each other;..." (Friedrich
Engels, “On Authority”)


EXACTLY SO. Authority (by consent) can have its place in various
specific and localized
productive systems. If you'll have a railroad system of some sort in the

future society, it's working
will be coordinated by an elected body. If one freely chooses to take
part in this *enterprise*, so to
speak, one has better adjust to its technical requirements and, when
necessary, take instructions and
comply by them. If you're not prepared to do this, you'd better go
somewhere else. This particular
work involves people's security and the workers must be of maximum
reliance.

However, I'll say two things here: 1) Society as a whole won't be
coordinated by authority methods,
even in this sense; 2) As production gets more and more automated,
authority will became an
exception and total autonomy will be the norm everywhere. Clogs in a
wheel type of work will tend
to be performed... by real clogs. We can produce all kinds of
"intelligent" clogs for it. Real people
will tend to do only creative work, for which autonomy is essential.


Ken, quoting Marx:
>"The labor of supervision and management is naturally required wherever

the direct process
>of production assumes the form of a combined social process, and not of

the isolated labor of
>independent producers. However, it has a double nature.
>"One the one hand, all labor in which many individuals co-operate
necessarily requires a
>commanding will to co-ordinate and unify the process, and functions
which apply not to
>partial operations but to the total activity of the workshop, much as
that of an orchestra
>conductor. This is a productive job, which must be performed in every
combined mode of
>production.
>"On the other hand...this supervision work necessarily arises in all
modes of production based
>on the antithesis between the laborer, as the direct producer, and the
owner of the means of
>production. The greater this antagonism, the greater the role played by

supervision. Hence it
>reaches its peak in the slave system....
>"In the works of ancient writers, who had the slave system before them,

both sides of the
>work of supervision are as inseparably combined in theory as they were
in practice. Likewise
>in the works of modern economists, who regard the capitalist mode of
production as
>absolute...."
>But Marx believed that these two sides of supervision could in fact be
separated. Pointing to
>various experiments with "co-operative factories", he claimed that: "In

a co-operative
>factory the antagonistic nature of the labour of supervision
disappears, because the manager
>is paid by the labourers instead of representing capital counterpoised
to them."
>(Capital, vol. 3, Part V "Division of Profit into Interest and Profit
of Enterprise.
>Interest-bearing capital", Ch. XXIII "Interest and Profit of
Enterprise", pp. 383-4, 387.
>Actually the whole passage pp. 383-390 is fascinating.)


Right on, Karl. If I understand it correctly, through the successive
class societies in History,
coordination work has tended to lose some of its more despotic
character. At the end of the line,
supervision and ordinary work will cease to be antagonistic in a
classless society. Then (my
conclusion), supervision disappears pure and simply, as technical
advances in automation and
robotics render it technically useless. Or rather, what actually
disappears is the supervised human
work. Supervision (plus conceptual design and engineering) will continue

but over the work of the
machines.

_________________________________________
NOTE:

(1) See Tom Thomas, 'Crise technique et temps de travail' (ed. of the
author, 1988); Tom Thomas,
'Partager le travail, c'est changer le travail' (Albatroz, 1994).
This comrade lives in eremite type seclusion at his home and is building

a great theoretical work, at a
pace of a book a year more or less. His works can't be found on
libraries or bookstores though. If
you write to him presenting yourself as a communist militant interested
in his work, he'll probably
send you any books you request. He lives at: 83, rue de Tolbiac, 75013
Paris, France.

--------------D18C9EEE253CD7937D5D23D9

HTML VERSION:

Ken:
>In your description, you take note of the fact that the "system" or
"information treatment
>device" can't alone solve problems. There must be "experts, or any
informed people" who
>"read this data and make their analysis". This is the administrative
apparatus, or
>organizational structure, or whatever. It doesn't matter what name you
give to it, you have in
>fact given a structure to this society. The computers don't really make
much difference except
>to allow faster collection of data and faster discussion of it. If the
computers could replace the
>panel of experts, they would make a big difference to the issue. But
the computers can't
>replace the need for human intervention and human judgment. Only if you
could eliminate the
>need for the experts or for the intervention of informed people (i.e.
people having more
>information about the subject or more interest in it, than the mass of
people), could you get
>closer to direct democracy.

>Perhaps your idea is that these panels of experts or informed people
differ from an
>administrative apparatus in that there could be both formal and
informal panels, there can be
>competing panels, anyone who is especially informed can enter the
panel, etc. etc. But all this
>is similar to my idea of an administrative apparatus. Anything you can
describe for your
>panels can be duplicated in my idea of an administrative apparatus,
because it is simply a
>question of a different name for the same concept. (It is not a
question of whether anyone
>trusts my assurances about this, any more than it is a matter of
whether anyone trusts your
>assurances. Whenever there is a relatively free system, various of
these safeguards are
>already used--the question is to find the economic conditions under
which they will be
>effective.)

>The point is that you recognize that, while people can switch from one
occupation to another,
>at any one time there are some people who are informed on electrical
generation, others who
>are informed about chemicals, and still others who are doctors, etc.
The fact that there are no
>class barriers to switching operations doesn't mean that everyone does
everything at the same
>time. Hence your talk of "informed people".
 

In my view, there will only be informal panels of experts, to use your
terms. So, in my opinion, I
don't think they add up to form any kind of apparatus. The thing is,
everybody can and will become
an *expert* on something. Of course, there will be people more talented
than others. Solely on this
base, some people will therefore tend to specialize on little and
simpler tasks and some others on
more global or complex problems and issues. Everybody will thus
naturally find his own field and
range of competence and *authority* (in the sense found by Engels in the
gentile society), based
solely on the quality of his own ideas, opinions and craftsmanship. The
sum result of all this will be
kind of an administration of everything by everybody.

No issues, however, will be decided by the *experts*, let alone
restricted panels of them. Under
communism, social matters are much too serious to be left for the
pernicious tyranny of experts. The
*authority* of the experts will be restricted to the (free and open to
everyone) discussion of the
problems and the selection of alternative solutions. There, the
arguments will fight each other openly
and may the best win the day. Once, by this process, a clear picture of
the problem is formed, the
alternative solutions must be expressed in a clear and comprehensible
way for everybody. Then the
issue is taken to a vote where every interested person (experts or not)
will have a single vote.

This is all very sketchy yet, but I think we can have direct democracy
on all fundamental issues,
however complex they might be.
 

Ken:
>The issue you raise of "democratic stress" is indeed very important.
But filtering the
>information, deciding what is major and what is minor, and so forth, is
not a mere technical
>function. It is not automatic. Whoever does this is really making major
decisions. So long as
>this isn't done by everyone (which would go against the whole idea of
filtering and which is
>impossible if you consider the millions and millions of economic
decisions that have to be
>made each year), it is being done by some form of organization. People
might vote on what
>kind of organization would do the filtering or whether mistakes had
been made in the
>filtering, but then they are voting on the type of organization to be
used and on its
>performance, rather than deciding all the issues by direct democracy.
 

The issue of filtering information is indeed a very important one. Let
me very clear here. All filtering
that is not totally free and exclusive self-filtering is absolutely
intolerable. No organization, however
democratic, filters anything to anybody. Everybody will have absolute
and total sovereignty over
what issues he/she chooses to be aware and informed of. Since nobody
(not even *God* or
Laplace's monster) can possibly receive and analyze all the information
available on the global
reseau, this is the only solution. It’s not just that central planning
is coercive and ineffective. As
society gets more and more complex, it will be virtually impossible.

How filtering will work is actually quite simple. Everybody will simply
*tune in* to whatever is of
more direct concern to him/her. They will participate in the forums and
the decisions taking place
there. Of course, since there is a high degree of social consciousness,
the more important and global
problems will tend to be followed by everybody.
 

Ken:
>One ends up with a complex system to decide the claims of different
areas. And yet, this
>system of deciding issues is irrelevant, unless it is assumed that the
decisions will have some
>binding effect. If every binding decision requires a state and a
repressive apparatus to enforce
>it (which I *don't* agree will be the case in classless society), then
so does the decision to
>enforce the veto on all relevant factories and enterprises. Moreover,
such decisions as those
>to ban DDT because it is poisoning various areas, have to be enforced
on health
>organizations and pesticide producers hundreds or even thousands of
miles away.
 

This is a really important issue: how to enforce bannings. I would say,
by pure means of spontaneous
social reprobation. You must remember that in a communist society, all
work is voluntary. If you
don't want to do nothing, you can lay down and do nothing. You will have
all the socially available
means of consumption and recreation at your disposal just the same. You
don't get *richer* out of
your productive initiative. If people work, it is by natural compulsion,
by the pure desire to be useful,
and also (and most importantly) by a desire of social recognition.
People will want to be admired by
their work. It is the expression of one's capacities and personality. So
it is a very weird phenomenon
indeed for a person (or a group of persons) to engage in a productive
activity only to be universally
despised and condemned. Nobody would use their products. It would be
proof of a seriously
deranged personality. I wouldn't say these people will be locked away,
for there probably won't be
any mental asylums left. Everybody is entitled to his own madness, as
long as it's not socially harmful.
But they will surely be a very marginal phenomenon. On the limit, a
neighborhood collective might
decide to dismantle and seal their hazardous and useless factories.
There won't be any need for a
repressive apparatus to take care of these cases.
 

Ken:
>The point I am raising is this. You try in theory to avoid organization
and simply have each
>individual relating to an almost invisible information network which
functions automatically
>without human intervention. But each time you consider a concrete
problem, you seem to add
>another layer of organization to your future society in order to deal
with it. In theory, you
>want to have an "invisible hand". In practice, you end up with the need
for *conscious human
>intervention* (and this requires organization) to solve one serious
problem after another.
 

When I talked of an *invisible hand*, this was kind of a private joke.
In fact, all productive decisions
are *conscious human interventions*. There is no anarchy of production.
People will have a very
clear picture of the current social needs and freely decide to satisfy
them. No *organization* (in the
sense of superior direction) will be required for this. Lenin's national
wide (in our case, world wide)
accounting and book-keeping is performed and permanently kept current
over the internet, or its
successor. We could call it Vladimir Lenin Resources Data House, or
something like it. Everybody
has access to this information. It will available to all, as will an
analytical description of all socially
expressed demands. (In fact, we already have software capable of doing
this. Capitalists use it - on
their “lean and mean” enterprises - to keep their inventory costs at a
minimum and provide a quick
reply to shifts in consumer demand.)

When people decide what to do, they will bear this in mind. Planning is
made by the sum of all
individual or otherwise autonomous productive decisions, for these will
be all socially *conscious*
ones. Everyone takes upon himself the role of planner and plan executor.
 

Ken:
>The need for coordination and an administrative apparatus in the future
society is something
>referred to by Marx and Engels; it springs from the very nature of
large-scale production.
>They did distinguish between the state and repressive authority on one
hand and that type of
>authority that would exist in a future society on the other. This
means, by the way, that they
>differed from the anarchists not just in their way of getting to the
future society, but in their
>picture of it as well. The anarchists tend towards the view of a
glorified society of individual
>producers; the Marxists, to a giant co-operative society based on
large-scale production but
>liberated from its capitalist chains.
 

From what I have depicted above, appearances to the contrary, there are
no *individual producers*
in my communist society. It's rather a cooperative society in the
Marxist sense, but one in which the
information necessary to coordinate it flows *all around* multilaterally
and not in a pyramidal
scheme. It works perfectly coordinated, but people in it are not just
pieces in a machine whose
general direction and purpose escapes them. They know the all picture
and move consciously within
it.

Ken:
>Engels draws the conclusion that "it is absurd to speak of the
principle of authority as being
>absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely
good. Authority and
>autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases
of the development
>of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the
social organisation of the
>future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the
conditions of production
>render it inevitable, we could understand each other;..." (Friedrich
Engels, “On Authority”)
 

EXACTLY SO. Authority (by consent) can have its place in various
specific and localized
productive systems. If you'll have a railroad system of some sort in the
future society, it's working
will be coordinated by an elected body. If one freely chooses to take
part in this *enterprise*, so to
speak, one has better adjust to its technical requirements and, when
necessary, take instructions and
comply by them. If you're not prepared to do this, you'd better go
somewhere else. This particular
work involves people's security and the workers must be of maximum
reliance.

However, I'll say two things here: 1) Society as a whole won't be
coordinated by authority methods,
even in this sense; 2) As production gets more and more automated,
authority will became an
exception and total autonomy will be the norm everywhere. Clogs in a
wheel type of work will tend
to be performed... by real clogs. We can produce all kinds of
"intelligent" clogs for it. Real people
will tend to do only creative work, for which autonomy is essential.
 

Ken, quoting Marx:
>"The labor of supervision and management is naturally required wherever
the direct process
>of production assumes the form of a combined social process, and not of
the isolated labor of
>independent producers. However, it has a double nature.
>"One the one hand, all labor in which many individuals co-operate
necessarily requires a
>commanding will to co-ordinate and unify the process, and functions
which apply not to
>partial operations but to the total activity of the workshop, much as
that of an orchestra
>conductor. This is a productive job, which must be performed in every
combined mode of
>production.
>"On the other hand...this supervision work necessarily arises in all
modes of production based
>on the antithesis between the laborer, as the direct producer, and the
owner of the means of
>production. The greater this antagonism, the greater the role played by
supervision. Hence it
>reaches its peak in the slave system....
>"In the works of ancient writers, who had the slave system before them,
both sides of the
>work of supervision are as inseparably combined in theory as they were
in practice. Likewise
>in the works of modern economists, who regard the capitalist mode of
production as
>absolute...."
>But Marx believed that these two sides of supervision could in fact be
separated. Pointing to
>various experiments with "co-operative factories", he claimed that: "In
a co-operative
>factory the antagonistic nature of the labour of supervision
disappears, because the manager
>is paid by the labourers instead of representing capital counterpoised
to them."
>(Capital, vol. 3, Part V "Division of Profit into Interest and Profit
of Enterprise.
>Interest-bearing capital", Ch. XXIII "Interest and Profit of
Enterprise", pp. 383-4, 387.
>Actually the whole passage pp. 383-390 is fascinating.)
 

Right on, Karl. If I understand it correctly, through the successive
class societies in History,
coordination work has tended to lose some of its more despotic
character. At the end of the line,
supervision and ordinary work will cease to be antagonistic in a
classless society. Then (my
conclusion), supervision disappears pure and simply, as technical
advances in automation and
robotics render it technically useless. Or rather, what actually
disappears is the supervised human
work. Supervision (plus conceptual design and engineering) will continue
but over the work of the
machines.

_________________________________________
NOTE:

(1) See Tom Thomas, 'Crise technique et temps de travail' (ed. of the
author, 1988); Tom Thomas,
'Partager le travail, c'est changer le travail' (Albatroz, 1994).
This comrade lives in eremite type seclusion at his home and is building
a great theoretical work, at a
pace of a book a year more or less. His works can't be found on
libraries or bookstores though. If
you write to him presenting yourself as a communist militant interested
in his work, he'll probably
send you any books you request. He lives at: 83, rue de Tolbiac, 75013
Paris, France. --------------D18C9EEE253CD7937D5D23D9-- --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


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