Re: [OPE-L] Participatory and democratic production

[Jerry Levy <Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxx>]

Dear Jerry; is the quantum of freedom gained deciding the placement of pumps justified by the efficiency loose of a democratic planning of that kind? Maybe people would be willing to place the time, otherwise consumed by the design of pumps, reading Nove's Feasible Socialism. If not, they have the possibility of becoming pumps engineers.

 

 

Hi Alejandro:

 

 

I belong to an online board  in which, I can assure you,  hundreds

of members would (and have)  happily spend time discussing the merits

of  different designs of  pumps for boats. That is by no means unique:

just look at a listing of the thousands of  'yahoogroups' devoted to the

discussion of special interests.  And, yes, engineers and engineering students

and laypeople who have an interest in engineering have already shown a 

willingness to discuss matters online related to specialized branches of

engineering. 

 

 

It is true, I  think, that there may be a democracy / efficiency tradeoff. 

Certainly, democracy takes longer than some authority issuing commands

and a temporal lag may in many circumstances be deemed to be

inefficient.  This question, though, has to be put in a historical context:

we already have experience with  highly bureaucratized and over-centralized

and non-democratic forms of "socialism".   The *key* issue which must be

overcome is the belief - based on the historical experience of those nations,

as perceived (perhaps incorrectly, in some ways) by the masses - that

socialism is inherently non-democratic.   In that sense, unless we have a

democratic model of socialism then *no* model  will be "efficient" since

no model would be feasible. 

 

 

Another *key* issue will be constructing a society that doesn't rest on 

*capitalist* norms of efficiency, profitability, and "choice". For example,

the doctrine of "dollar votes" is  antithetical to socialism and democracy since

it is not based on the   principle of 'one person, one vote' (instead it's 'one

dollar, one vote'). Where,  then, there is income inequality, this would give a

disproportionate vote to those with a higher income and this would undermine

the social solidarity which is a necessary characteristic of socialism.

 

 

In solidarity, Jerry