So what the hell is so "revolutionary" about giving workers and elected members of the public two-thirds of the control over public sector institutions?
Well, as I said, it's about making people comfortable with being in control. This society that we've constructed is incredibly complex and it's been designed by and for capitalists and technocrats. But we can't just smash it. A lot of people don't want to smash it. But what do we do with it? First, more people have to get a chance to figure out how it works. These elected citizen representatives will be a part of this process. Every hospital will have a number of ordinary people up there representing the communities as potential users (and definitely the taxpayers) of that institution. Every water and sewer system, every highway, every local power facility and every local police service. Whoever is interested can run for a term or two as a paid representative of the general public.
So, ordinary people will get an understanding of how their society really functions and will have a hand in the sometimes difficult decisions of managing important public resources. I'm willing to bet that that alone will bring about a difference in the organization and delivery of services. As well, ordinary people, either as workers or as citizen representatives, will get empowered by having genuine decision-making capabilities, unmediated by a corporate hierarchy with a non-democratic agenda.
This is a "revolutionary" strategy that deals with the citizenry that we have now, where millions of people like their donut drive-throughs and their chemically-treated lawns. We'll have to get past the narcissistic, ecologically unsustainable nature of this society but we'll first have to get people unafraid of public management, of democratic control.
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6 comments:
"But we can't just smash it."
So who wants to? Anarchists? Please.
"Smashing it" means a complete break with the past, and the creation of something new; the gradualism you're advocating is a "smashing" too that someone, somewhere in that nebulous "we" will be so worried about "going too fast" that they'll demand a halt even to the little experiment you want to try.
I'm not sure that I follow you. Are you saying that I'm proposing something so mild but that I'm still underestimating the forces of resistance? Or are you saying that what I'm proposing is more radical and "smashing" than I understand?
Kind of both actually.
I think what I'm trying to say is that, no matter that it's only "baby steps" you want to take (no matter how well they might be justified), someone is going to oppose them for one reason or another. The same thing can be said about more robust demands as well, so why not just go for broke and demand full worker control instead of a half-way measure?
Todd,
I answered your last point in the earlier thread's comments.
But thanks for taking the time to debate this with me.
I identify as an anarchist, and the sort of gradual revolution you're articulating sounds a lot like what a famous Italian anarchist from the 1930s, Errico Malatesta, said in a pamphlet called "Towards Anarchism". Here is a quote:
"...And as the conscience, determination, and capacity of men continuously develop and find means of expression in the gradual modification of the new environment and in the realisation of the desires in proportion to their being formed and becoming imperious, so it is with Anarchism; Anarchism cannot come but little by little – slowly, but surely, growing in intensity and extension."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1930s/xx/toanarchy.htm
utopiaorbust,
I'll look that fellow up! I had proposed making all workplaces democratic, all at once, but I think that there are too many mental barriers in our society for that to be feasible.
So yeah, bit-by-bit, first with hundreds of citizens out of every 100,000 getting practical experience in running public services, with unions getting an equal say with management, all of this well within the constitutional powers of any provincial or federal government, people will see that they can govern their own affairs, that the public sector is valuable, and others will see that worker control is feasible within the wider society.
How'd you find this thread by the way? google?
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