Democracy and Its Alternatives

MBM

Well-known member
Suggest taking this out from the "Elections in Iraq" thread as I see this as worthy of a separate thread.
Can anyone describe viable alternatives to democracy?
 
O

Omaar

Guest
That sounds like a wise idea.

I must say I've become a lot more cynical about the electoral aspect of democracy over the last few months, due mainly to what I've read about the US elections and the elections in Iraq.

For me the word democracy itself has become somewhat tainted, along with, unfortunately, Freedom (and to a lesser extent Liberty which has always had a bit of a hollow ring to it for me), which just sound like rhetorical appeals rather than philosophical or political concepts. And Justice too.

Not that I'm opposed to these ideas, its more like when a song you used to like gets bought up to be used to sell something, and you hear it over and over again and again so that it becomes a constant reminder of capitalism's ability to swallow up everything into it ....

I think I rememember reading something baudrillard wrote on the masses which might be relevant to where I'm going with this line of thought, I'll see if I can dig it up somewhere.
 

MBM

Well-known member
a constant reminder of capitalism's ability to swallow up everything into it

Well, yeah. Except that I don't buy the model of capitalism as this omnivorous Thing that consumes everything, this Totalising/Totalised Enemy.

Capitalism is not one thing. It is a multitude.

If you take capitalism to be a particular type of ownership and a particular set of labour relations that entails then it's not obvious that even a majority of human beings live within that model.

E.g. 70% of the Indian population still live in villages - and their lives are feudal/agarian rather than capitalist/industrial. The issue they face is not that they don't own the means of production but that many of them don't own the land they live on.

Likewise, there are many versions of democracy out there. I would argue there are more and less effective democracies - I'm not sure where I'd put the US. Some would say that I am merely arranging deck chairs on the Titanic or missing the wood for the trees.

A lot of the ideas on this board seem like some dark mirror image of Fukuyama - the future for the world is free-market capitalism, liberal democracy and human rights - but as hell rather than (Fukuyama's qualified) heaven.
 

turtles

in the sea
Parecon anyone?

I'm sure at least a few people here must have heard of Parecon ? Created by Michael Albert (editor of ZMag ) and Robin Hanel, it's supposed to be an alternative to both communist and capitalist economies (it's short for Participatory Economics). I'm no expert on it, but I've read a couple of articles on it. There's a book as well, entitled Parecon, that i've not been brave enought to read yet. Seems very well though out and detailed, though there's lots of way's one could criticise it.

I'm probably butchering this, but I'll attempt a summary. In short AFAIK, it relies on four main pillars (taken from here thought there's lots of other articles) :

ONE. "First, in parecon people participate in economic life via nested workers and consumers councils that repeatedly arise whenever people seek to control their own economies, as most recently in Argentina.

The added feature of parecon's councils is a commitment to self managed decision making. "


TWO."Second, remuneration in a parecon is for effort and sacrifice, not for output or bargaining power.

In a parecon we will earn more if we work longer, if we work harder, or if we work under more harsh or harmful conditions.

Parecon rejects someone earning by virtue of having a deed in his or her pocket. There is no moral or incentive warrant for that.

...

More controversially, parecon also rejects that we should get back from an economy the amount we contribute to it by our personal labors."


THREE.
(and this is the fun part, IMO. note, for coordinator class, read middle class)
"Third, participatory economics needs a new division of labor.

...

Parecon calls this third institutional commitment balanced job complexes.

Everyone in any society will by definition be doing some collection of tasks as his or her job.

If the economy employs a corporate division of labor our tasks will combine into a job that is either largely empowering or that is largely disempowering.

In contrast, a participatory economy will combine tasks into jobs so that the overall empowerment effect of each job is like the overall empowerment effect of every other job.

We don't have managers and assemblers, editors and secretaries, surgeons and nurses. The functions these actors now fulfill persist in a parecon, but the labor is divided up differently

Of course some people do surgery while most don't, but those who take scalpel to brains also clean bed pans, or sweep floors, or assist with other hospital functions.

The total empowerment and pleasure that the surgeon's new job affords is made average by remixing tasks. She now has a balanced job complex that conveys the same total empowerment and pleasure as the new job of the person who previously only cleaned up.

The domination of what I call the coordinator class over all other workers is removed not by eliminating empowering tasks or by everyone doing the same things. Both these options are not only irrational but impossible.

Nor is coordinator class rule eliminated by just extolling rote work as important, which is possible and has even been tried, but which is structurally vacuous.

What eliminates coordinator class rule is distributing empowering and rote work so that all economic actors are able to participate in self managed decision making without undue advantage accruing to some due to their economic roles."


FOUR. "What we need in place of central planning and competitive market allocation, is for informed self managed workers and consumers with appropriate training and confidence, and with social motivations, to cooperatively negotiate inputs and outputs each accessing accurate information and valuations and each having a say in proportion as choices impact them.

What allocation system can accomplish all that?

Worker and consumer councils propose their work activities and consumption preferences in light of best available and constantly updated knowledge of true valuations of the full social benefits and costs of their choices.

Councils engage in a back and forth cooperative communication of mutually informed preferences.

They utilize a variety of simple communicative tools including indicative prices, facilitation boards, and other features which permit actors to express, mediate, and refine their desires in light of other actor's desires.

Workers and consumers indicate their personal and also their group preferences. They learn what others have indicated. They alter their preferences in an effort to move toward personally fulfilling work and consumption as well as a viable overall plan.

At each new step in the negotiation each actor seeks personal well being and development, but each can improve their lot only by acting in accord with more general social benefit and not by exploiting others.

As in any economy, consumers take account of their income and the relative costs of available items and choose what they desire. Workers similarly indicate how much work they wish to do in light of requests for their output, as well as their own labor/leisure preferences."



Hey I figure while we're talking about unatainable ideals I might as well throw another one out there. Just so we don't get stuck thinking communism and capatilism are it as far as choices go (let's not forget anarchism too!). Some of Albert's critisims of capatilsm and communism in that article are pretty good too, if you're interested.
 
O

Omaar

Guest
MBM - I basically agree with your first point, I may not have been clear in my post (definitely not the first or the last time). I was basically just thinking of the way advertising co-opts so many things to achieve its aims, not about whether or not capitalism is swallowing up the whole world.

I'm not saying that everyone on earth lives in a capitalist society, but I do think that it is largely capitalism [or various different forms of capitalism if you like] that basically shapes the way world works. Capitalist societies play a really important role in determining how non-capitalist societies behave, what they produce, how much they produce. Capitalist organisations are certainly trying to get all countries involved in the free market, and I guess that mean making a show of setting up liberal democracies to get all that free trade happening.

I don't know much about Fukuyama, but I guess you're right, from my point of view the idea that the free market is the final solution ideology quite frightening. I just had a quick look for him on wikipedia, and I'm intrigued that apparently in Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution he "qualifies his original "end of history" thesis, arguing that since biotechnology increasingly allows humans to control their own evolution, it may allow humans to become fundamentally unequal, and thus spell the end of liberal democracy as a workable system." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama

bipedaldave - had seen parecon mentioned on znet, will check it out. it looks a bit drier than anarchism though.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Funnily enough, I was reading Fukuyama only this morning. One of the things that's interesting about his thesis is that it is the end of History AND the Last Man. Nietzsche rather than Marx as the enemy of Human Security/ satiety, i.e. it fits with the idea that Jon Savage/ Greil Marcus were developing around the same time about punk and the 'politics of boredom'.

But Fukuyama's revisiting of Hegel was only an ideological expression of Deleuze-Guattari's re-situating of Hegelian Progressivism. Yes, Deleuze-Guattari say, there is, after all, a 'universal history', but it is not a linear progression. Capitalism is what is universal about history in that it is the negative of any PARTICULAR social formation. Unlike other social systems which are defined by totems and taboos, capital is defined only by its teleology: the propagation of capital. Yes, capitalism can perfectly well coincide with all kinds of 'archaic' social codes - there can be an agrarian capitalist society, a futurist capitalist society, an agrarian-futurist society - no problem. That is what makes capitalism so robust - it requires only that the social field is sufficiently decoded for it to implant itself.

At the same time, what people mistake for the 'Progress' of Humanity is in reality capital's tendency towards increased decoding. Religious authority, moral injunctions posing as absolute, the integrity of the human organism, all of these tend to fall away as capital does its work.

It is in this sense that capital is a devouring Thing - a 'tungsten carbide stomach' as Lyotard memorably puts it. It is not that capital ACTUALLY, empirically destroys every pre-existing aspect of the social system it parasitizes; it is that it has no particular need for any of them, only for an empty 'social as such'. Therefore, there is nothing that Capital can't IN PRINCIPLE consume.
 
Top