Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 21:23:00 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: The state (authoritarianism)



I do not say that complexity automatically leads to domination. I have
spelled out the worries that motivate me to support liberal democracy
fairly often in this discussion, but once more. 

To talk about "people collectively deciding" is easy enough in the
abstract, but in a large and complex society, which a modern industrial
society must necessarily be, virtually all of the "collective" decisions
must be delegated to smaller groups, whose decisions in turn must be
coordinated in some way. The first delegation means that the rest of the
people have only indirect influence on how they are made. The need for
coordination, itself requiring a small group whose decisions can only be
influenced indirectly by most people, generates authority: coordination
means that decisions once made must be enforceable. Moreover a lot of the
specialized decisions delegated to both the particuolar groups taht must
make them and the group(s) that coordinate them will, of necessity, be
fairly technical, so most people will lack the knowledge to assess all or
even most of them in any detail. They will register on their aggregate
effects.

These are facts about how people produce their lives. They are material
fact. They do not derive from posits about intrinsic badness or
powerhungriness or anything of that sort. It's just the way collective
decisionmaking works beyond the level of a group of more than threeor four
people. 

We add a postulate of moderate self-interest: people care more about their
own interests and those of the people they know, live, and work with than
those of people far away. Eradicating such self-inter4est might be
possible with great difficulty and truly totalitarian nightmare measures,
but quite apart from the undesirability of the necesasry methods to get
rid of it, the effect would be bad because the main check against possible
abuse of power, enlightened self-interest, would be gone. In any case,
given such self interest, people to whom the decisions are delegated and
people who coordinate affairs woulkd tend to make decisions in ways taht
advantaged themselves. They might think it advantaged everyone else; but
they might be wrong about that. 

Individual production units, for example, in a planned society would tend
to overstate their requirements and understate their capabilities so that
they would have lower targets and more resources to meet them. The
plannaing agency would tend to regrads its decisions, which represent a
great deal of careful reserach and work, as manifestly untouchable and to
treat attacks on it as examples of narrow self-interest. But the group
would also tend to develop plans, and implement plans, in a way that
favored itself, enhancing its authority and control. I speak here only of
economics.

This need nor be more than incidental friction--if checked. If left
unchecked, it's easy to see that it could develop in real domination from
above and mutual exploitation horizontally, as each production unit tries
to benefit from the work of others without doing as much itself. There are
obvious efficiency problems here, but I'm not addressing those as muich as
the political problems. 

OK, thus for size and complexity. In addition there are problems
associated with differences of fundamental values both in choosing endsa
nd in implementing means. If some like more freetime while others like
more material wealth, how is this difference to be resolved in a way that
most will agree is fair? Without institutions that operate by reasonably
quick, reliable, and just processes, the difference I postulate, if
resolved, will lead either to the free-timers being forced by social
pressure to work more than they want or the material-wealthers going
without things they desire, and the losers in any case feeling
exploited. Likewise with choice of means: suppose we all agree to pursue
free time: there are lots of ways to do that, and different ones will
advanatge and disadavnatge people differently. Shall we have more free
time by producing less? By working harder but faster? Or what? These sorts
of differences likewise require fair procedures for their resolution.
Without such fair procedures, you have unfair ones or none, and neither of
the two latter options is acceptable.

--Justin 


On 17 Sep 1996, jc mullen wrote:
> 	But the real answer to Justin's worries is around what creates classes.
> because a bureaucracy that defends its own interests against the people and
> forms an economic structure that helps it to do so is a class. And classes do
> not come from complexity in itself or from bureaucrats in themselves. In no
> important way did Stalinism come from Stalin. You have to start with how do
> people produce and reproduce everyday life, and who controls this. When people
> collectively decide how to produce and reproduce everyday life, becoming a
> bureaucrat defending in an authoritarian manner one's own interests against the
> rest of the population will be about as attractive as becoming a wizard or
> voodooman is to the majority of people today. In my opinion, people will have
> problems even understanding the idea of a minority of society controlling
> production for their own interests, in the way that only in Science fiction
> books do rulers make peoplepay to breathe air.
> 	I would like Justin to explain in some detail whu complexity should lead
> to domination automatically. It ain't necessarily so. 
> 	John Mullen 
> 	SI France
> 
> 
> 
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