- 12 Apr 2013 21:16
#14213169
In a society with very few restrictions on what people do, decisions are more a matter of consensus than voting. A left-anarchy would not organize itself in a customary top-down hierarchy. It would not be a case of everyone voting on what "the government" will do, it's a matter of everyone kind of doing their own thing--with the understanding that most of what a person does needs to be done in concert with other people. In practice, democracy of this sort is really just a matter of consensus-building, not a matter of everyone voting, then everyone being compelled to follow the plan the majority decided upon.
I mean, say there's a contentious choice between two plans; Plan A, and Plan B. Under normal capitalist representative democracies, the representatives that people elected get to choose between enacting Plan A, or enacting Plan B, but everyone will follow the plan the majority of representatives decide upon. Say 60% of those representatives vote for Plan B, and 40% vote for Plan A. Well, under customary capitalist governments that means the government is going to enforce Plan B on everyone. Under a left-anarchist socialist government, what would actually happen is that the government would propose both Plan A and Plan B as options; if 60% of the people think that Plan B makes more sense, than 60% of the population will work towards Plan B, and the other 40% will work towards their preferred alternatives. This is still planning in the sense that the government is popularizing and publishing certain plans that others can decide to follow--and if it's a good plan, it would probably get a lot of traction.
Granted, from a practical standpoint it's pretty hard to conceptualize a national "Plan A/Plan B" scenario, since in real life such things tend to be distributed a bit more than that. In practice that sort of decisionmaking usually takes place at the firm level under both systems. In a capitalist system, the shareholders elect a board, who then usually appoint leadership, who make decisions that everyone else has to follow. Under left-anarchist socialism, the usual firm organization would probably be along the lines of a cooperative, and people would have to decide for themselves what makes the most sense to pursue.
Obviously firms under a socialist system would do a lot more work on worker education and horizontal communication between workers. Rather than just saying "hey, the guys on top must be experts, so we'll follow their every command," it would really just be a matter of making everyone reasonably educated in matters pertaining to the business--at least to a level where they can understand the decisions they need to make. The goal in such organizations would be to achieve a sufficient level of communication that most people working in a firm understand not only what they need to be doing, but why they ought to do it, and why it ought to be done in a particular way. The important part--the democratic part--would be in attaining this consensus among the workforce.
Granted, larger firms might need to organize themselves in more of a federal manner than that.
This sort of workplace--and political--organization is utterly outside the norm we find in state-capitalist systems. People under capitalism just kind of assume that there needs to be one plan that everyone follows, when in fact it's entirely workable to have one big group of people pursuing one plan and another big group of people pursuing another plan. And you can have a much larger number of such plans than just two. That's what democracy means in the sense that left-anarchists are talking about democracy. It's a democracy in action, not just elections. Policies under a left-anarchist government would not be "enacted", they would be proposed and people would be free to follow them or not.
A left-anarchist government would be a government that makes recommendations that you are entirely free to ignore if you want.
Socialism deals with the wants and needs of small groups of people--maybe a few dozen--not with millions. State-capitalists try to deal with the wants and needs of millions.
That you can ignore if you want.
Tell them to fuck off, go paint portraits. If for some reason you felt you needed more people involved in this portrait painting, go find or start a portrait painting collective with folks who you can work with.
I mean, it's not like a national "government" under a left-anarchist system would have very much power at all. It would really not be very much other than a method for smaller groups to communicate with other smaller groups.
No, you just go do whatever you feel you ought to do. If the planners could rationally explain a good reason--which you agreed with--that there was more of a need for statues than portraits, and that you were the person they thought best suited to carve those statues... would you really dismiss them out of hand? Because under a left-anarchist system, they would almost certainly not bother about things like this unless there was some overwhelming reason that dictated a need for statues rather than portraits.
Why would they even bother to try to get portrait painters to carve statues? It would be kind of pointless. Obviously if you need a statue made, you find people who want to make statues to do it.
Continue to make portraits as you believe you ought to do.
That would be up to the two of you to decide, though I'm kind of confused where you're coming up with this "forced to sculpt sculptures" scenario. I mean, since we're kind of assuming that you're being forced out of a sense of civic duty to do as the government asked you to do, maybe you could just explain the (apparently persuasive) argument the government made to your co-worker and the two of you could decide to split the overall sculpting workload between you. Since just about the only power a left-anarchist government would have is the ability to make a compelling argument in favor of certain policies, obviously there would have to be some pressing reason that convinced you that sculptures needed to be made despite your preference for making portraits.
Why dig ditches if no one feels they need to be dug? If there really aren't enough people who think the ditches need to be dug in order to find the labor needed to dig them... then obviously the ditches aren't very important, and you should probably be questioning why there is a ditch-digging request in the first place.
You're misunderstanding the left-anarchist use of the word democracy, which refers to more than simply voting.
Joe Liberty wrote:I've been following this conversation today and perhaps I've misunderstood, but this is one of the things that hangs me up about left-anarchy: planning. While it's described as "polycentric", it seems to me that it would still boil down to either a select board of 'deciders' or the tyranny of the majority.
In a society with very few restrictions on what people do, decisions are more a matter of consensus than voting. A left-anarchy would not organize itself in a customary top-down hierarchy. It would not be a case of everyone voting on what "the government" will do, it's a matter of everyone kind of doing their own thing--with the understanding that most of what a person does needs to be done in concert with other people. In practice, democracy of this sort is really just a matter of consensus-building, not a matter of everyone voting, then everyone being compelled to follow the plan the majority decided upon.
I mean, say there's a contentious choice between two plans; Plan A, and Plan B. Under normal capitalist representative democracies, the representatives that people elected get to choose between enacting Plan A, or enacting Plan B, but everyone will follow the plan the majority of representatives decide upon. Say 60% of those representatives vote for Plan B, and 40% vote for Plan A. Well, under customary capitalist governments that means the government is going to enforce Plan B on everyone. Under a left-anarchist socialist government, what would actually happen is that the government would propose both Plan A and Plan B as options; if 60% of the people think that Plan B makes more sense, than 60% of the population will work towards Plan B, and the other 40% will work towards their preferred alternatives. This is still planning in the sense that the government is popularizing and publishing certain plans that others can decide to follow--and if it's a good plan, it would probably get a lot of traction.
Granted, from a practical standpoint it's pretty hard to conceptualize a national "Plan A/Plan B" scenario, since in real life such things tend to be distributed a bit more than that. In practice that sort of decisionmaking usually takes place at the firm level under both systems. In a capitalist system, the shareholders elect a board, who then usually appoint leadership, who make decisions that everyone else has to follow. Under left-anarchist socialism, the usual firm organization would probably be along the lines of a cooperative, and people would have to decide for themselves what makes the most sense to pursue.
Obviously firms under a socialist system would do a lot more work on worker education and horizontal communication between workers. Rather than just saying "hey, the guys on top must be experts, so we'll follow their every command," it would really just be a matter of making everyone reasonably educated in matters pertaining to the business--at least to a level where they can understand the decisions they need to make. The goal in such organizations would be to achieve a sufficient level of communication that most people working in a firm understand not only what they need to be doing, but why they ought to do it, and why it ought to be done in a particular way. The important part--the democratic part--would be in attaining this consensus among the workforce.
Granted, larger firms might need to organize themselves in more of a federal manner than that.
This sort of workplace--and political--organization is utterly outside the norm we find in state-capitalist systems. People under capitalism just kind of assume that there needs to be one plan that everyone follows, when in fact it's entirely workable to have one big group of people pursuing one plan and another big group of people pursuing another plan. And you can have a much larger number of such plans than just two. That's what democracy means in the sense that left-anarchists are talking about democracy. It's a democracy in action, not just elections. Policies under a left-anarchist government would not be "enacted", they would be proposed and people would be free to follow them or not.
In neither case do I get the impression that the individual is free.
A left-anarchist government would be a government that makes recommendations that you are entirely free to ignore if you want.
In fact that's one of the beauties of capitalism, or at least a free market, the fact that nobody is trying to guess the plans of millions of individuals each with his own wants and needs.
Socialism deals with the wants and needs of small groups of people--maybe a few dozen--not with millions. State-capitalists try to deal with the wants and needs of millions.
It sounds like you've simply replaced government with just another bureaucracy.
That you can ignore if you want.
If I'm an artist and I don't want to create statues as has been "polycentrally planned" for me, but I want to paint portraits, what's my recourse?
Tell them to fuck off, go paint portraits. If for some reason you felt you needed more people involved in this portrait painting, go find or start a portrait painting collective with folks who you can work with.
I mean, it's not like a national "government" under a left-anarchist system would have very much power at all. It would really not be very much other than a method for smaller groups to communicate with other smaller groups.
Do I lobby politically for the permission of the planners to change my vocation?
No, you just go do whatever you feel you ought to do. If the planners could rationally explain a good reason--which you agreed with--that there was more of a need for statues than portraits, and that you were the person they thought best suited to carve those statues... would you really dismiss them out of hand? Because under a left-anarchist system, they would almost certainly not bother about things like this unless there was some overwhelming reason that dictated a need for statues rather than portraits.
Why would they even bother to try to get portrait painters to carve statues? It would be kind of pointless. Obviously if you need a statue made, you find people who want to make statues to do it.
What if there's already a portrait painter in our group but I think I'm better than he is?
Continue to make portraits as you believe you ought to do.
Who gets to decide which one of us is polycentrally planned to be the portrait painter and which one has to sculpt?
That would be up to the two of you to decide, though I'm kind of confused where you're coming up with this "forced to sculpt sculptures" scenario. I mean, since we're kind of assuming that you're being forced out of a sense of civic duty to do as the government asked you to do, maybe you could just explain the (apparently persuasive) argument the government made to your co-worker and the two of you could decide to split the overall sculpting workload between you. Since just about the only power a left-anarchist government would have is the ability to make a compelling argument in favor of certain policies, obviously there would have to be some pressing reason that convinced you that sculptures needed to be made despite your preference for making portraits.
Who digs the ditches if nobody wants to dig them? What's the incentive, altruism?
Why dig ditches if no one feels they need to be dug? If there really aren't enough people who think the ditches need to be dug in order to find the labor needed to dig them... then obviously the ditches aren't very important, and you should probably be questioning why there is a ditch-digging request in the first place.
I'll qualify this again by saying it's possible I've misunderstood things, but those answers are not clear to me.
You're misunderstanding the left-anarchist use of the word democracy, which refers to more than simply voting.