Friday, August 4
Anarchism is too hierarchical!
INDIVIDUALISM, SOCIALISM
I think what I'm going to outline is not really mainstream socialist theory. In fact, I don't know if I've come across any other socialist who has express the same views on this matter. Perhaps it's because they've never really thought to question the standard model based on unions and examples like the socialists in Cataluña fighting Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Or perhaps it's because I'm just wrong.
The traditional leftie socialist ideal - particularly among anarchists and libertarian socialists - is known as a 'ground up' affair: that is, all power (which is held by all people) begins at the smallest level: workplace unions, living-communes, and so forth, and representatives - actually, the preferred term is delegates - are sent from each to negotiate when there are interactions, and so on, up to the top. What's more, social and economic interaction are all organised through this commune-federation structure.
The 'opposite' is the 'top-down' approach: a central power sends the orders down the chain of command to the local level, and thence to the individual.
Neither seem particularly palatable, to be honest, especially in the fast-paced world of today - let alone the future. What I have in mind is something drastically different. What I have in mind is that every individual has direct access to the very core of society. There is no up or down, no ground or top, just across - to other individuals and to the community as a whole. I think the way to understand this is to consider the role of the state.
The way I see it, the state should not have an identity of its own as it does today. The state should simply be a balance-sheet for society, a fulcrum for its individuals, a common, global enabler of which each of us is a part. What's more, there should be no hierachy removing us from the state. Today, we have a clear hierarchy - we, the people, elect politicians as middlemen between us and the state. We also pay businesses to act as middlemen between us and the economy. Between them, individuals are kept well away from the helm of society, with the result that the go-betweens, surprisingly enough, exploit their positions, to the detriment of the likes of you and me (and the ones that don't get ousted by the ones who are prepared to swap ethics for power). The accountability that modern 'democracy' is supposed to produce simply does not work, and in practice, no amount of safeguards can prevent those at higher levels from abusing power.
But how could we manage without any structure? Well, we couldn't - but I'm not suggesting that we leave ourselves with no structure. Rather, this is the role of the state - the provision of a democratic and accessible structure to which we can all contribute. Let's say I make a proposal that a road be extended to join up with another. Anyone could contribute - even people not from around that area, if they happen to have something to add (local issues are often of no interest whatsoever to outsiders, mind) - and eventually, a vote would be held on that motion. If carried, public resources (labour, building materials, tools and transport) would be allocated, and the road built (or not built, as the case may be). This debate would take place within the context of a budget set for road transport by another debate - i.e. the entire populace would discuss the rough amounts of public resources they want to allocate to each area of society; this proposal would be competing with other ideas (e.g. resurfacing a road which has been damaged) for a share of the transport budget. The most popular proposals would then be implemented.
What about expertise, you might ask? Clearly important. Every society has to get the balance right between idealising and ignoring our experts. What we also forget is the struggle to identify those experts. When talking about resurfacing a road, it's not just those with fancy degrees we should be listening to - it's the people who actually build and maintain them - they are the ones that can tell you what the day-to-day issues are. Whereas modern society would shrink from constructing a lowly labourer, I think, outside of the officious structures of today, contributions from real experts would be respected for their real worth, and valued alongside arguments from outside the profession. In today's world, where we have little contact with the centres of power, let alone the ability to challenge them, we often either passively and uncritically accept the opinions of anyone with enough letters after their name, or go the other way and support a culture of anti-expertise, in which we refuse to accept anything that comes to us from those better informed (unless we happen to agree with it). Neither of these produces a proper appreciation of knowledge or experience, and, often goaded by the media, who just want a good story out of it, we end up ignoring the point that whatever one or another authority thinks, we can do nothing about it.
That doesn't preclude comissioning research, by the way. If we need to know how much it would cost in manpower, tarmac, and so on to build a road from one place to another, then we won't have to just pull a number from a hat, we can pay someone to do it properly. That's how government works nowadays: parties have various ideas, they pick the ones that look as if they're not just jokes put in the manifesto to amuse the voters, they tell the civil service to find out if they're feasible (though I think the current fashion is to pay your mates' consultancy business to give you the answers you want), and if they still seem to hold water, they put them to a vote. The difference, of course, is that there are no self-serving middlemen involved.
I'm not saying that an anarchist voluntary federation government could never work. For that matter, I'm not even saying that a Leninist vanguard party could never work (for a time, at least). I just question the wisdom of replacing one set of hierarchies and middlemen with another, when we could fight for a more democratic, more dynamic society based on participation and inclusion.
INDIVIDUALISM, SOCIALISM
I think what I'm going to outline is not really mainstream socialist theory. In fact, I don't know if I've come across any other socialist who has express the same views on this matter. Perhaps it's because they've never really thought to question the standard model based on unions and examples like the socialists in Cataluña fighting Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Or perhaps it's because I'm just wrong.
The traditional leftie socialist ideal - particularly among anarchists and libertarian socialists - is known as a 'ground up' affair: that is, all power (which is held by all people) begins at the smallest level: workplace unions, living-communes, and so forth, and representatives - actually, the preferred term is delegates - are sent from each to negotiate when there are interactions, and so on, up to the top. What's more, social and economic interaction are all organised through this commune-federation structure.
The 'opposite' is the 'top-down' approach: a central power sends the orders down the chain of command to the local level, and thence to the individual.
Neither seem particularly palatable, to be honest, especially in the fast-paced world of today - let alone the future. What I have in mind is something drastically different. What I have in mind is that every individual has direct access to the very core of society. There is no up or down, no ground or top, just across - to other individuals and to the community as a whole. I think the way to understand this is to consider the role of the state.
The way I see it, the state should not have an identity of its own as it does today. The state should simply be a balance-sheet for society, a fulcrum for its individuals, a common, global enabler of which each of us is a part. What's more, there should be no hierachy removing us from the state. Today, we have a clear hierarchy - we, the people, elect politicians as middlemen between us and the state. We also pay businesses to act as middlemen between us and the economy. Between them, individuals are kept well away from the helm of society, with the result that the go-betweens, surprisingly enough, exploit their positions, to the detriment of the likes of you and me (and the ones that don't get ousted by the ones who are prepared to swap ethics for power). The accountability that modern 'democracy' is supposed to produce simply does not work, and in practice, no amount of safeguards can prevent those at higher levels from abusing power.
But how could we manage without any structure? Well, we couldn't - but I'm not suggesting that we leave ourselves with no structure. Rather, this is the role of the state - the provision of a democratic and accessible structure to which we can all contribute. Let's say I make a proposal that a road be extended to join up with another. Anyone could contribute - even people not from around that area, if they happen to have something to add (local issues are often of no interest whatsoever to outsiders, mind) - and eventually, a vote would be held on that motion. If carried, public resources (labour, building materials, tools and transport) would be allocated, and the road built (or not built, as the case may be). This debate would take place within the context of a budget set for road transport by another debate - i.e. the entire populace would discuss the rough amounts of public resources they want to allocate to each area of society; this proposal would be competing with other ideas (e.g. resurfacing a road which has been damaged) for a share of the transport budget. The most popular proposals would then be implemented.
What about expertise, you might ask? Clearly important. Every society has to get the balance right between idealising and ignoring our experts. What we also forget is the struggle to identify those experts. When talking about resurfacing a road, it's not just those with fancy degrees we should be listening to - it's the people who actually build and maintain them - they are the ones that can tell you what the day-to-day issues are. Whereas modern society would shrink from constructing a lowly labourer, I think, outside of the officious structures of today, contributions from real experts would be respected for their real worth, and valued alongside arguments from outside the profession. In today's world, where we have little contact with the centres of power, let alone the ability to challenge them, we often either passively and uncritically accept the opinions of anyone with enough letters after their name, or go the other way and support a culture of anti-expertise, in which we refuse to accept anything that comes to us from those better informed (unless we happen to agree with it). Neither of these produces a proper appreciation of knowledge or experience, and, often goaded by the media, who just want a good story out of it, we end up ignoring the point that whatever one or another authority thinks, we can do nothing about it.
That doesn't preclude comissioning research, by the way. If we need to know how much it would cost in manpower, tarmac, and so on to build a road from one place to another, then we won't have to just pull a number from a hat, we can pay someone to do it properly. That's how government works nowadays: parties have various ideas, they pick the ones that look as if they're not just jokes put in the manifesto to amuse the voters, they tell the civil service to find out if they're feasible (though I think the current fashion is to pay your mates' consultancy business to give you the answers you want), and if they still seem to hold water, they put them to a vote. The difference, of course, is that there are no self-serving middlemen involved.
I'm not saying that an anarchist voluntary federation government could never work. For that matter, I'm not even saying that a Leninist vanguard party could never work (for a time, at least). I just question the wisdom of replacing one set of hierarchies and middlemen with another, when we could fight for a more democratic, more dynamic society based on participation and inclusion.
# posted by Phugebrins @ 23:19 
