Newsgroup: it.politica.pds
Titolo: Confronto a sinistra, qualcosa è cambiato

Confronto a sinistra, qualcosa è cambiato
C'è qualcosa di nuovo nel dibattito sulla proposta Prodi che muove il
confronto tra i riformisti. E' la coscienza che il quadro internazionale e
interno in questi ultimi dieci anni è mutato profondamente e c'è la
necessità di una profonda ridefinizione delle culture politiche del
centrosinistra.
Prodi, nel suo documento, afferma come «se guardiamo ai dati che misurano la
distribuzione del reddito all'interno delle singole società nazionali siamo
costretti a riconoscere che le disuguaglianze, dopo essere discese tra il
1970 e il 1980, sono nuovamente cresciute tanto da essere ritornate, alla
fine dello scorso decennio, dove erano trenta anni prima».
Ieri, sull'Unità, un altro riconoscimento è quello che viene da una firma
importante della sinistra, Alfredo Reichlin, che arriva a una conclusione
altrettanto drastica: «E' cambiata la situazione storica. Questo è il fatto.
Ed è di questa profonda novità che noi non riusciamo ancora a prendere le
misure. Voglio dire che non esiste più quella situazione che una decina di
anni fa dette al riformismo, inteso come terza via tra il vecchio statalismo
e il darwinismo del mercato, una funzione reale». In questo quadro, dice
Reichlin, «non vuol dire più nulla che la sinistra rappresenta la
modernizzazione».
Sono affermazioni importanti perché segnano un vero passaggio di fase. E'
finita l'apologia della modernizzazione e delle magnifiche sorti della
globalizzazione neoliberista. C'è il riconoscimento, cioè, che siamo dentro
una fase di rivoluzione neoconservatrice e con questa occorre misurarsi.
Possiamo considerare questo approccio utile perché permette un confronto che
parte direttamente dalla realtà di questa rivoluzione neoconservatice e
delle conseguenze drammatiche che determina. Ma qui nascono le differenze e
la sinistra radicale e quella moderata possono trovare l'occasione di
misurarsi in un confronto e in una sfida.
Reichlin dice che il problema per le forze riformiste è che ancora non sono
riuscite a «prendere le misure della nuova destra». Ma questa riflessione
andrebbe ulteriormente approfondita. In cosa consiste, infatti, quella
misura? Con una generalizzazione che serve a dare un'idea fondamentale della
tendenza in atto, possiamo dire che tale misura consiste nella
precarizzazione. La rivoluzione neoconservatrice consiste in una
precarizzazione continuativa ed espansiva di ogni forma della vita di
relazione sociale, a partire dai rapporti di lavoro, per giungere ai tempi
di vita e alle relazioni interpersonali.
La precarizzazione dei tempi di lavoro e di vita portano ad un
imbarbarimento complessivo della società e ad una regressione nelle culture
e nella medesima sfera della democrazia. Morire a causa del lavoro nero per
40 euro è la metafora di questa precarizzazione che la rivoluzione
neoconservatrice impone come se fosse una condizione normale e accettabile
di esistenza.
Per molti anni hanno cercato di far credere che questo tipo di
modernizzazione fosse ineluttabile e che l'alternativa di società fosse
morta per far posto a una alternanza tra forze che, nelle scelte
fondamentali di politica economica e sociale, fossero sostanzialmente
omogenee. E, nel sistema politico, hanno cercato di espungere, attraverso
l'introduzione del sistema maggioritario e dell'invadenza del potere
esecutivo, ogni forza radicale che, in qualche modo, si rendesse autonoma da
quella gabbia.
Il punto di differenza è proprio su come si esce da quella gabbia e come si
riattualizza il tema dell'alternativa di società. Su questo punto non
esistono scorciatoie e il vero rischio per il centro sinistra, che pure si
interroga criticamente sulla fine della "terza via", è di una drammatica
coazione a ripetere dell'illusione di poter governare questa
globalizzazione, temperandone gli effetti con una sostanziale distinzione
dei compiti tra la politica e l'economia, dando alla prima il compito di
lenire le conseguenze che, inevitabilmente, si producono nella seconda. Un
solo esempio, che è anche nell'intervento di Reichlin, quando afferma «anche
certe esplosioni di rabbia sociale che scavalcano i sindacati, assieme con
il diffondersi delle povertà ci chiedono una politica unitaria».
Ma come non vedere il balbettio con il quale il centro sinistra, nel suo
complesso, e proprio, in particolare, le forze che si orientano verso
l'unificazione nel partito riformista, hanno affrontato la vertenza degli
autoferrotranviari che rappresenta anch'essa una metafora della condizione
lavorativa nel nostro Paese e del nodo di una irrisolta e acuta questione
salariale? Può essere affrontata, come fa Reichlin, in nome della
concertazione o, invece, anche quella vertenza non pone il problema del
superamento di quella politica fallimentare per i lavoratori e, alla fine,
anche per l'intera economia?
Insomma, per noi, il vero problema è che per prendere le misure a questa
nuova destra occorre saper parlare a quella parte della società che è
sottoposta da decenni ai colpi delle politiche neoliberiste e proporre una
nuova politica che parli della generalizzazione dei diritti sociali e di un
nuovo spazio di intervento e di controllo pubblico.
Walter De Cesaris
-- 
Saluti & Salute
    Pomero

 omogenee.
Va bene. Qualcuno vuole per favore spiegarmi cosa sarebbe questa
"alternativa di societa'"? Altrimenti mi dispiace ma si continua a blaterare
di nulla. E' il comunismo? E' il paradiso terrestre? Quale e' la alternativa
ad una societa' basata sul libero mercato e sulle democrazia
liberali?Please.
JP


Se ci fosse ancora Socius avremmo la risposta... :)))))) ROTFLOL
Leftorium, Il blog Riformista
http://clik.to/leftorium

 Se ci fosse ancora Socius avremmo la risposta... :)))))) ROTFLOL
Che non avresti capito egualmente
Pomero

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Probabile. 
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 di nulla....
Non ti conviene stare attaccato al pc in attesa di risposta, potrebbe
essere la tua ultime azione.....
Mr. X
-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - 
http://www.Mailgate.ORG

 "alternativa di societa'"?
Leggiti, per cominciare:
Michael Albert, Il libro dell'economia partecipativa. La vita dopo il
capitalismo (Milano, il Saggiatore)
Domenico De Simone, Un'altra moneta (Roma, Malatempora)
Le alternative esistono, basta informarsi.
--------------------------------
Inviato via 
http://arianna.libero.it/usenet/

Le alternative esistono, basta informarsi.
Certo un'altra alternativa è possibile... basta informarsi al check
in.
Bye.
PS:  Def auguri, come Turin in questi giorni (non mi manca
proprio...)?
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 Sì, la carta igienica. Ora usano l'umidità
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 Le alternative esistono, basta informarsi.
Lascia perdere De Simone: lo ho letto, e sono certo che sia uno scrittore
satirico molto migliore del nostro Alessandro Nava. Sopratutto quando parla
di economia. E noi dovremmo fare la rivoluzione per applicare i "bond
negativi" di De Simone? Poi dicono perche' non si vedono alternative al
capitlaismo.
Rimango in attesa. Grazie del tentativo, comunque.
JP

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> Rimango in attesa. Grazie del tentativo, comunque.
Prego. Di Albert che mi dici? Un comico anche lui?
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--------------------------------
Inviato via 
http://arianna.libero.it/usenet/

 Prego. Di Albert che mi dici? Un comico anche lui?
Non lo conosco. Puoi sintetizzarmi la sua posizione?
JP

 PS: Def auguri, come Turin in questi giorni (non mi manca proprio...)?
Ricambio gli auguri. Torino č bellissima, come sempre.
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> Non lo conosco. Puoi sintetizzarmi la sua posizione?
Sono un po' nelle curve, inizio a citarti qualche link:
a) 
www.parecon.org
b) 
http://open-economy.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Parecon+FAQ
Detto stringatissimamente, si tratta di un sistema in cui cosa produrre e
come e quanto viene deciso democraticamente da consigli di lavoratori e
consumatori (occhio che il soviet non c'entra, perché il capitale non è
statale ma semmai è sociale). Si basa sull'assunto che ciascuno ha il dovere
di partecipare alle scelte produttive ed economiche e ha il diritto di avere
peso decisionale quanto più quelle questioni lo riguardano (penso a come
sarebbe diverso il mondo del lavoro se tale principio venisse applicato).
Insomma basta con la produzione in massa di beni destinati a mercati
autonomi, ma un concetto più "cooperativistico", se vogliamo, della
produzione.
Anche i lavori cambiano, nella parecon, e i vari svantaggi e vantaggi di
ogni mansione sono ripartiti, a turno, tra la collettività (per quanto
possibile in base alle proprie conoscenze, ovvio).
Nel numero 3 di invisibili (
http://invisibili.altervista.org
) ho schedato i
due libri di Albert editi in Italia.
P.S. il sistema mi pare buono. Temo solo che alla maggior parte delle
persone non gliene freghi nulla di essere più consapevole, più
partecipativo, e di contribuire alle decisioni che la riguardano; ciò vuol
dire studiare, informarsi, insomma essere un vero cittadino e la massa
spesso preferisce che gli altri decidano e pensano per lei...


 ha scritto nel messaggio
news:bsuahc$9lg$1...@newsreader.mailgate.org...
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Non importa, la ho trovata da me (e riportata piu' sotto):
http://www.parecon.org/writings/oldalbert9.htm
La cosa che e' descritta qui sotto si chiama comunismo, con un nuovo brand.
Quello che questo Albert dice qui sotto e' che il socialismo non va inteso
in senso sovietico, tradito dalla pianificazione economica e dalla elite, ma
nel nuovo senso, bla bla bla. Non e' nuova. E' trotskismo. Guarda che lo
dico senta sarcasmo: e' minestra riscaldata. Ha un difetto: non funziona.
Per cui, per rispondere alla tua domanda: no, Albert non e' un comico. E' un
imitatore.
Proviamo allora con una domanda piu' semplice. Quale e' lo scopo di una
impresa? Creare lavoro? Creare buoni prodotti? Fare ricchi i suoi
proprietari? Nessuno?Chiunque sappia dare una risposta a questa domanda (e
io ammetto di non saperla ancora dare) e' gia' sulla buona strada per
definire un riformismo di sinistra, la cui definizione (seconda ammissione)
e' ancora troppo vaga. Ma se non si ha la minima idea di quello a cui serva
la risposta a questa domanda, inutile perdere tempo a parlare di
rivoluzione.
JP
Participatory Economics Interview
  Michael Albert
  Interviewed by Kate Redmond
KATE REDMOND: We're in the studio today with Michael Albert, activist and
author of several books, including Looking Forward from South End Press and
Political Economy of Participatory Economics from Princeton University
Press, and co-founder and editor of Z Magazine. Welcome to KFAI in
Minneapolis.
MICHAEL ALBERT: Thank you very much for having me. Actually, I'm co-author
of the two books you mentioned, with Robin Hahnel, an economist who teaches
at American University.
Tell us, what is participatory economics?
It's a different way of organizing an economy. We have in the U.S. now a
capitalist economy in which some people own corporations, markets regulate
allocation, and if you look inside workplaces you find a hierarchy in which
some people do rote manual labor, some people have more skilled tasks, and a
few people make decisions. That's the heart of our system of
economy--private ownership of workplaces, markets, and hierarchical
workplace organization--and I don't like it.
I don't like the private ownership because it leads to few people owning and
controlling almost all the wealth and therefore having tremendous power. In
our economy, commentators discuss the bottom 90 percent of the population,
and while that's an amazing and embarrassing concept, it's accurate. The top
10 percent, and actually just the top few percent, effectively run the whole
economy. That's inequitable, unjust, and undemocratic, so we ought to be
able to do better.
And I don't like the hierarchical division of work because it ensures that
most people have little or no say over their labor and are can't be equal to
one another in the workplace or have a fair share of fulfilling as well as
not so fulfilling tasks. Yet, there's no ethical reason and not even any
compelling economic reason why some people should enjoy better work
circumstances and have more fulfilling and less dangerous or boring
responsibilities than others, much less greater decision making power. So,
again, we ought to be able to do better.
And I don't like the market because the market forces people to be out for
themselves with no social conscience. The market doesn't work unless people
advance only themselves. When people who own businesses advance only
themselves, they seek profit regardless of adverse effects on the ecology,
regardless of adverse effects on their workers, and even regardless of
adverse effects on consumers. If you are an individual worker and consumer
and you advance only for yourself--you ignore the well being of the people
who produce what you consume or consume what you produce, or who live in
your community with you. This means you operate in isolation from others,
even trying to get ahead at their expense. And markets have many more ills,
creating inequality, fostering unemployment, causing ecological disruption,
embodying alienation, promoting personality distortion, and so on. So,
again, why not try to do better?
So participatory economics is a new type of system based on different
defining institutions.
In participatory economics, instead of private ownership of capital,
everybody equally owns the means of production. It's just shared among the
whole populace, so ownership is equal and generates no income or well being
or power differences. How well off each person is, how much income and how
much say in decisions each person has, are affected instead by
allocation--and the way allocation is handled in participatory economics is
very different from the market system we're familiar with in our
society--and by workplace organization.
For participatory allocation, people develop a scenario or agenda for what
is to be done. Everyone is a participant in that process. We each figure out
what we want to do or consume, either individually or with our work group,
and everybody proposes their view. The mesh of those proposals is refined,
back and forth, in a number of rounds of give-and-take, until a
comprehensive agenda is settled on. Everyone participates in this
give-and-take in proportion as they are affected by the decisions under
consideration so the system is participatory and self-managing.
Likewise, the way you organize the workplace in participatory economics is
also unlike what we're familiar with under capitalism. In capitalism, you
take all the tasks in the workplace and combine them into jobs where each
actor has numerous instances of only one kind of task. One person does a
variety of janitorial tasks and is a janitor. Someone else answers the phone
and does some other secretarial tasks and is a secretary. Someone else
administers and is a manager. Another person determines financial policy,
projects revenues, etc., and is CEO. Each job occupies a place in a
hierarchical scheme.
In participatory economics, in contrast, we combine tasks into jobs so each
person has a fair share of different kinds of tasks. It's like taking items
from a Chinese menu to make a meal. The capitalist way is to take only one
thing and call it a meal. Some get good ones, some get bad ones. The
participatory way is to take a balanced serving of a variety of
complementary things as a meal. Each person gets a fair and comparable meal.
In the workplace, the thing you create is a job and the things you take from
the menu are tasks. In capitalism, each worker gets one or at most a few
very similar kinds of tasks at one level of authority, skill, empowerment,
etc. In the participatory version, you instead combine a diverse selection
of tasks into jobs so that everybody has a fair share of the more rewarding
and more onerous tasks. It's essential to do this, first because its
equitable. There's no more reason why some people should take risks and
others shouldn't, why some people should give orders and others only be
ordered around, than why some people should be rich and others poor. It's
also essential to balance workplace circumstances because it empowers people
to participate in decision-making. Instead of some of us being deadened and
kept relatively ignorant by our work while others are continually refining
their decision making skills and monopolizing relevant knowledge, as in the
hierarchical case--with participation and balanced jobs we all develop our
potentials to participate with readiness and skill.
The difference between capitalism and participatory economics is the
difference between the kind of economy that spends immense sums building
missiles that sit in the ground but little to finance quality health care
for all, and the kind that does the reverse. It's the difference between the
kind of economy that uses schools to teach most people how to endure boredom
so they'll be prepared to work obediently for other people who have had
elite schooling, and the kind of economy that emphasizes developing all
peoples' skills and talents so everyone will be prepared to participate and
contribute in a balanced way. It's the difference between elites making all
decisions, and everyone playing a fair and proportionate role, between a few
people having immense power and wealth while most are barely getting by or
worse, and everyone having a fair share.
So your approach eliminates specialization, which some would argue decreases
efficiency?
We don't eliminate specialization so much as narrow specialists. Take the
favorite example of a hospital. We'll still have surgeons. We don't do away
with surgery or with the special skills, knowledge, and talents needed to do
surgery well. It's just that people who do surgery will do other things too
so that their overall work responsibility is fair. More important, the
ex-secretary and everyone else at the hospital will now also do a job that
combines a variety of tasks and responsibilities in a fair mix.
But if surgeons have to spend some time doing things other than surgery,
like cleaning up part of the hospital, then aren't we losing output?
Yes, if you can only have the number of people trained in doing surgery as
now and we take away some time that they now do surgery. But suppose we have
more surgeons. Then, there's no new surgery shortage. Or, for that matter,
suppose we have today's surgeons spend some of the time they devote to golf
doing non-surgical work so they have their fair share of diverse types of
task. Again, there's no new surgery shortage.
In our economy what happens is that most people don't have their skills and
capabilities developed. Most people don't have their talents elaborated.
What we do is intentionally not utilize most people's capacities. To keep
some people at the top, capitalism under-utilizes many other peoples'
talents and even squashes their creativity out of existence. What
participatory economics does instead is establish fairness while getting
more productivity by not wasting most people's abilities and potentials so
only a few can dominate.
But how do we get there from here? It seems we're about as far from what
you're suggesting as we could be.
I can't give you a road map because there is no road map. The basic rough
answer is that people get together and develop an understanding of the roots
of the problems in society so they are not distracted by peripheral issues,
they begin to organize into movements to deal with those problems, to win
reforms and win changes, whether in their income or for more control over
their job, or other gains, and they build those movements larger and larger
until eventually they begin to make demands that are more structural. They
may create new institutions as they proceed, for example, councils in
workplaces and communities that start to do the kind of things they will
later be responsible for in participatory economics. That's the way change
has occurred throughout history, whether around this issue, economics, or
around issues of race, sexuality, ecology, or whatever: partly winning
reforms, partly building new relations, finally redefining basic structures.
It's very difficult, especially at the outset, but once the process reaches
a certain level of awareness and involvement and a certain scale of its own
institutions and organizations, progress is very rapid indeed.
Under the participatory approach, would everyone get paid the same?
Yes. The work that we do has a mix of tasks different for each person but
comparable in terms of their fulfillment or onus. My workday is like yours
and ours is like everyone else's, not in details, but in overall demands and
rewards. So why should one person get paid more than another? The only way
to earn a little more than someone else, or than you did last year, is to
work extra hours. You could work some overtime, or you could work less than
society's average to earn less. But the basic point is that income would be
geared to effort where effort is measured by how long you work at a job
equally demanding as everyone else's. So other than people working a little
more or less, income would be equal. Compare that to a system in which the
CEO of a corporation not only has less risky, boring, and debilitating tasks
and more tasks that are intrinsically rewarding, but also earns as much as
80 or 100 or even 200 of his employees. Capitalism is theft, greed,
exclusion. Participatory economics is equity, solidarity, participation.
It sounds a lot like socialism. Is this socialism?
It depends on what we mean by socialism. The word has for decades been
applied to the Soviet system, and participatory economics is nothing like
that. I described the system we live under now, capitalism, as private
ownership of capital by a small group at the top, markets, and a
hierarchical workplace. The Soviet system doesn't have that small group
owning the means of production. Their revolution got rid of that and
replaced it with state ownership. But that was still an elite group, so that
change was one elite, the capitalist class, replaced by another, the state
bureaucracy. The Russian revolution also replaced the market with central
planning. But that's again very different from what I want. That's where a
particular group of planners decides an agenda for the whole economy. The
central planners send down a set of orders to all the workplaces. All the
actors in the society respond to the orders by saying whether they can
fulfill them. That information goes back to the center. New orders come
down. Up goes obedience. It's just a very authoritarian, hierarchical
system. And finally, the Soviet workplace was organized just like Ford Motor
Company or other U.S. workplaces. They would be hard to distinguish, except
by level of technology. The internal structure of the Soviet workplace and
the U.S. workplace were otherwise quite alike. So no, the system that I'm
proposing is not that.
But, of course, that's also not what socialism was supposed to be. The
reason why the Soviet system was called socialist was twofold. The Soviet
elite called it socialism so they could be legitimated by the label. Who
could rebel against the system if it was already the best one conceivable?
The U.S. elite called the Soviet system socialism, in contrast, so socialism
would be delegitimated by the identification. If the Soviet Union was
socialist, what sensible citizen of the U.S. could want to oppose
capitalism? So if socialism means the Soviet system, what we've been talking
about has nothing to do with socialism. On the other hand, if socialism
means people controlling their own lives and economy with equity, diversity,
participation, and self management, then you could call the system I'm
proposing socialist.
Let's talk a little more about markets. You want the abolition of the
market...
That's exactly right. I'm an abolitionist regarding markets. Obviously, it's
not a popular position right now, when there is a general conception that
markets are somehow the panacea for everything. But I think that's a giant
con job.
Markets are actually quite a simple institution. By a market we don't mean
just the place where you go and purchase something. We mean a system where
producers offer things, consumers purchase things, there are prices that
mediate between the two, and a balance comes by way of pressures associated
with supply and demand. But market competition requires that everybody be
greedy. That everybody be for themselves. It's produces the opposite of
solidarity and empathy. Nice guys finish last is actually true. Markets not
only don't reward caring about others, they make it impossible for people to
take into account the conditions of others. When we buy a compact disc, we
don't think about the condition of the workers that produced the disc. We
have no information that would let us do that. It isn't even an option. And
the same goes in reverse. At work, we don't think about the people who are
going to consume the product we're completing. I try to get ahead and so do
you, and we all do it without regard for the impact on others.
Markets also misvalue things. They undervalue the worth of products that
have positive public impact. So they undervalue public goods like parks or
public education or public health care and ecological balance. Conversely,
markets overvalue things which have private good effects but public bad
effects. So they overvalue a car which pollutes and hurts the public but
helps the person who individually buys it. So with markets you get a very
skewed development. Markets bend of the direction the economy goes to
emphasize narrow individualism and reduce sociality.
Also, markets foster a class division between people who make decisions and
people who don't, and this is not only not fair, but the conflicts that
arise between managers and workers, experts and clients, limit productivity,
as does the under utilization of many peoples' talents.
I could go on, but all in all, markets lead toward privatization,
inequality, and ecological decay and away from social concern, equity, and
ecological balance. They under utilize capacities and waste talents. They
serve certain elites very well, and are therefore defended by those elites
who tell us that markets are wonderful. But it's a con job. And you only
have to look around to see it. But the massive propaganda about markets is
overwhelming, and people sometimes succumb.
What if the marketplace were taken out of the political realm. If there was
still competition, which the U.S. seems so hooked on as a motivator, and yet
economics was not dictated by different political mechanisms that drive it.
Most of those mechanisms really are economic. The government certainly
participates in economics and can make outcomes worse or better, but the
basic features I've been talking about are due only to the economic
attributes I emphasized: private ownership of capital, markets, and
hierarchical workplace organization.
But let's just consider competition itself, for a minute. Suppose you're
organizing a running race and you want to motivate the best outcomes. One
way you can organize your race, the way any high powered competitor type
would say to do it, is to have some prize money and give most of the prize
money to the winner, and a little less for second and third place finishers,
and that's it. Then we'll get the best race times.
But look how this really works. Imagine that one person is really fast and
can win the race relatively easily. Do she have an incentive to run as fast
as she can? Not at all. Instead, at great cost, you've given her an
incentive to run just fast enough to win and no faster. And what about the
person who is going to come in fourth, fifth, eighth, or twentieth? They
have no incentive whatsoever. As soon as they see they're out of the money,
as far as competitive incentive is concerned, they might as well walk over
the finish line. But suppose we say we're going to reward everybody in line
with their previous efforts. If you run as well as you've done in the past,
we'll give you this baseline amount. If you do better, we'll give you more
of a payoff in proportion to the improvement. So if you work harder, and
your effort is greater, you'll get more. We're not going to give more to
whoever finishes first just for winning. We're going to give more for doing
better than you've done before. If you think about that, you'll see that the
overall speed of the whole assembly of people in the race is going to be
greater in the second case than in the usual approach. Each runner has an
incentive to go as fast as she can, regardless of how fast anyone else goes.
In fact, simple-minded competition is not so efficient after all. It is good
for the few who win, but it isn't good for the overall productivity of the
whole group. Does rewarding those at the top tremendously and those below
barely at all elicit production? Well, yes, you can have a society with
industry and output that functions that way. We've got that all around us.
So it works in that sense. Especially if you're willing to use military
power throughout the rest of the world to rip off riches to make up for
inefficiencies. But could we do much better? Yes. It's just that in my way
of doing better, you have to have equity, and the people at the top are much
more concerned to prevent equity than to maximize productivity.
What's the scale you're looking at? What's the scale of a participatory
economy?
It's any scale. You can have a participatory economy in a small country or a
large one. Participatory economies can have many differences depending on
cultures, levels of development, and what not. It would be different in
different places, but you can have it at any scale...but I think maybe
you're referring to what's the scale of the institutions within the economy.
Do we break down large firms and communities...
And are these communities self sufficient? Is there an exchange going on
which could mean the marketplace...
What you are perhaps leading toward is that there is a fourth alternative to
the market, central planning, and participatory economics. We could just get
rid of allocation entirely. Have collective ownership, no hierarchy, and
small self-sufficient communities where there is face-to-face economics in
which you don't have people in point A producing stuff that's consumed far
away at points B, C, and so on, so you don't have an elaborate allocation
system at all. This is a solution. But it's a solution that gives away, I
think, a great amount of development and economies of scale. I don't think a
good economy is one in which you don't have hospitals, in which you don't
have computers, in which you don't have cellos, and in which you don't have
telephones. I also don't think a good economy is one in which you do have
these types of things but you have to have 40,000 plants to manufacture
each--from toothpicks to pencils to bicycles to heart-lung machines--so
every community can have them without having to get them from any great
distance away. This immense duplication of effort and of workplaces is not
even the most ecologically wise way to create things. There is too much
redundancy and waste of resources.
So my answer regarding scale is that the scale you choose for communities
and the degree to which you choose small industries versus larger ones is a
social decision. You weigh off the gains of decentralization versus the
gains of economies of scale. What's nice is that in participatory economics
this is a decision you can make and implement, self-consciously, with a full
debate, and with room for correction as you learn more. But in capitalism
and the Soviet system alike, there is a drive toward centralization and a
drive toward large scale units regardless of their bad effects and way past
the point that centralization and large scale make sense. So I think the
scale will be smaller and more decentralized in a participatory economy. But
not so small or so decentralized that there is great waste or loss of
valuable capabilities.
Going further into the details, is there room for things like insurance
companies, the media. What role would media play?
There are no insurance companies. There's not really any banks. No IRS. No
Wall Street. Many institutions we're familiar with are gone, or at least
don't exist in anything resembling the form they now take. There's no
advertising as we know it because you only want to let people know about the
way things actually are, not trick them into buying stuff that's inferior or
that they don't really need or won't benefit from. There's no redundancies
of products in the sense that we know it. No real estate firms, brokerage
houses, surveillance and control systems, as we know them. And obviously
there's no military production in the sense that we know it. The savings
associated with all this that could be put to social good are immense. And
the reason these things don't exist is they just don't have any role. You
don't need insurance when your income is guaranteed, when health care is
guaranteed, when housing is guaranteed. You don't need banks when you're not
doing private investments and you don't have cause to use the banks for
mortgages and the like. Participatory economics doesn't have those
institutions. No welfare system. No unemployment bureaucracies. It has new
institutions, though, associated with the allocation procedures we talked
about earlier.
But, of course, media still exists. Media is communication and it's
crucially important in any society. A critical problem with our own society
today is the kind of media we have. The media is, like every other economic
institution, controlled by a relative few who have certain interests and
make sure that the media--with the exception of radio stations like this
one, of course--comply with those interests. And radio stations like this,
as a result, are very important. Community radio is very important.
Alternative print media is very important. It's very hard for these efforts
to become large, in a society like ours, but they are nonetheless an
important outlet.
In a good society media is important because you can't have democracy,
participation, and self-management, unless you have knowledge. It doesn't
make any sense to have a right to make a decision about something if you
don't have the information you need. As an example of that thesis, suppose
there's going to be a first-in-a-long-time election in a Central America
country where the U.S. is involved in an-ongoing struggles. If you look
behind the news in the mainstream press and TV, you discover that before one
of those initial "free elections," the U.S. and its local client regimes
destroy the local labor unions, disrupt the religious community groups,
close down local independent radio stations and newspapers, and eliminate
the means for people to get together to develop a position and share ideas
about agenda. Then they have an election to choose between candidates
Washington finds acceptable. Like in U.S. elections, there is no real
discussion of program or issues, but just a couple of interchangeable people
competing for an office. Once you get rid of the possibility of real serious
public grappling with ideas and possibilities, then you can have a free
election, because nothing is at stake. So in participatory economics, since
participation and freedom are taken seriously, of course there will be media
at many levels and scales, all, however, operated according to the
equitable, balanced, and participatory norms of the economy as a whole.
One of my concerns is always the accessibility of these ideas to the folks
who need them most. People who are struggling day-to-day with survival and
who have the least to lose and most to gain from the system changing. How
are you putting this out in a popular fashion, like the Green's conference
you're here to speak at, and in the media?
Just as you see here, coming on a radio show like this and trying to get the
ideas across. I have a hard time, though. There is never enough time to
really do justice to alternative ways of thinking and organizing on a single
show or even at a conference. And, also, I don't know whether I'm as clear
as a I could be. It's particularly difficult to get information to
struggling folks, because you can't do it by way of Time Magazine. You can't
do it by way of NBC. So we instead try to develop our own media and our own
outreach. We're doing it at Z. And we're trying to expand into other means
of reaching out as well. You're doing it in community radio. Other
periodicals like Dollars and Sense, In These Times, Monthly Review, Radical
America, the Progressive are doing it in print, and so on. Of course, a free
press isn't particularly relevant if the only people who have access to it
and control over its contents are the rich. Then it's a rich press. Or a
press for the rich. And we have to try to overcome that as part of the
process of developing movements and winning change.

Sorry, ci siamo sovrapposti. Comunque stiamo guardando le stesse fonti.

 Proviamo allora con una domanda piu' semplice. Quale e' lo scopo di una
impresa?
La mia risposta è che non dovrebbe esistere imprese, ma semmai,
organizzazioni cooperativistiche, dove decide la comunità.
Non essendo possibile questo, mi viene in mente la lezione di Olivetti:
l'impresa deve redistribuire la ricchezza, deve essere un soggetto
responsabile che migliora la vita di chi viene in contatto con essa.
Ora come ora, invece, è sul lavoro che l'uomo subisce le maggiori
umiliazioni, le maggiori sofferenze.


 organizzazioni cooperativistiche, dove decide la comunità.
........
Da quello che leggo ritengo che questo sistema alternativo possa
andare bene x piccole comunità rurali, non certo x sostituire in
maniera credibile l'attuale.
Ad esempio l'unico settore che ha generato posti di lavoro in quantità
è il terziario, settore che verrebbe sacrificato da questo sistema
cooperativistico. Del resto, parlando di comunità, molte cose non
avrebbero più senso.  Credo che questa rimanga, più che
un'argomentazione
economica, un'idea filosofica, un nuovo concetto di mondo e di uomo.
Se abitassi a Capo Verde ci potrei fare un pensierino, qui in Europa
mi puzza di un salto all'indietro nella Storia di almeno quattro
secoli.
Cosa intendiamo x comunità??
Il comune?? Come schematizzare il tutto riferendoci ad un'area
metropolitana?? Se con l'UE abbiamo un tentativo di cancellare
frontiere e nazionalismi con il tuo concetto non rischiamo di prendere
la direzione opposta??


 Rimango in attesa. Grazie del tentativo, comunque.
Io credo che sia difficile descrivere il capitalismo europeo senza tener
conto del ruolo dei partiti, dei sindacati e dell'associazionismo in genere,
di sinistra.
Il capitalismo è  una società dinamica perché genera continuamente conflitti
e soluzioni dei conflitti, che possono andare dal taglio di teste e
dall'esportazione armata della libertà, ai tempi della rivoluzione francese,
fino all'attuale contrattazione delle condizioni di vita e di lavoro di gran
parte della popolazione.
Il capitalismo è addomesticabile perché le istituzioni che è costretto a
creare sono permeabili alla democrazia, e quindi possono essere costrette a
prendere decisioni dopo ampie e trasparenti discussioni.
Solo una visione papalina può far ritenere che sia possibile un mondo del
bene, continuamente impedito dalle forze del male, identificate nella voglia
di arricchirsi vieppiù di pochi ben identificati personaggi. D'altra parte,
su una visione di questo tipo è meglio attrezzato Bush, che trova facilmente
consensi su una linea che identifica il bene con gli USA e il male col resto
del mondo.
L'Europa è la parte del mondo nella quale (anche se con un paio di guerre
mondiali e qualche feroce dittatura di destra) il capitale è stato costretto
al maggior numero di compromessi), da ciò dipende la sua opulenza, non dallo
sfruttamento delle risorse altrui.
Se parliamo di PVS la prima considerazione da fare è che una classe
lavoratrice organizzata (cioè il presupposto della democrazia) non si crea
dall'oggi al domani.
Però sia i sindacati europei, sia l'Internazionale Socialista si adoperano
per favorire il rapido sviluppo delle organizzazioni dei lavoratori.
Un'economia più attenta ai bisogni dei ceti più deboli nasce solo dalla
capacità di contrattare le politiche sociali. Ed è una capacità che non
nasce da qualche legge, ma dall'esperienza.

 rivoluzione.
Un'impresa serve a far arricchire l'imprenditore. Nessuno inizia un'impresa
con uno scopo diverso.
La creazione di lavoro, di buoni prodotti, di opere socialmente utili,
dipendono dal mercato e dalla società nella quale si opera.
Il riformismo di sinistra deve, prima di tutto, ricordare che alcune riforme
sono già state fatte e c'è solo da consentire di gestirle. Sanità, scuola e
pensioni (cioè la base dello stato sociale) sono state radicalmente
riformate e servirebbero solo piccoli ritocchi. Per il resto, il riformismo
si organizza, come lo spirito rivoluzionario.
Basta abbandonare l'idea che possano esservi riforme che danno benefici a
tutti, e organizzare la domanda di quelle riforme delle quali si
avvantaggiano i lavoratori. Certo che quando il lavoratore entra in crisi di
disperazione perché deve spostarsi per un po' da Castellammare a Torino non
c'è riformismo che tenga.

 Sì, la carta igienica. Ora usano l'unità


 la direzione opposta??
Questo no. Anzi. È quello a cui riferivo tempo fa parlando di reti di
comunità che superano agilmente i confini nazionali...
Lorenzo

 Sì, la carta igienica. Ora usano l'unità


c'è riformismo che tenga.
Lascia perdere il mio esodo bisettimanale che tra un po' finisce. Ora
sto a casa tanto qui i "casini politici" (nonostante la mia temporanea
assenza) aumentano.
Credo che uno dei problemi fondamentali della democrazia sia oggi
coniugare globalizzazione e diversità, cioè evitare di scivolare
nell'uniformità. Stiglitz, per esempio, ha ragione quando contesta
duramente il G8 che troppo spesso assomiglia a un G1, vale a dire uno
strapotere degli USA (con sommo gaudio di Arterio). La stessa
preoccupazione, del resto, era presente nel libro di Giuliano Amato,
"Tornare al futuro". 
L'economia globale ha bisogno di regole, ma queste regole non le può
fare l'America come talvolta appare (e talvolta succede).  Ovviamente
la soluzione non è semplice. Di sicuro non si può pensare di risolvere
il divario tra democrazia e capitalismo, tra democrazia e
globalizzazione in una radicale messa in questione dell'economia di
mercato, cioè con un ritorno al passato come propongono i papalini Fra
Lorenzo,  il reddivivo dev/ e sicuramente la buon anima virtuale di
Socius.
Nello stesso tempo- e  a maggior ragione - non  può essere
proponibile una politica intesa come gestione dell'esistente. La
politica ha bisogno di una nuova visione nella quale siano esclusi
tanto il cosiddetto "digital divide" quanto un mercato senza regole. 
Così come il mondo ha bisogno di valori e principi condivisi, senza i
quali la società è ingovernabile. La missione della sinistra
riformista per me consiste appunto in questo.
Impostato in questo modo, il problema assume il  significato di una
grande sfida culturale, oltre che politica. I riformisti devono
dimostrare di essere in grado di affrontare questa sfida - che è
anche, nello stesso tempo, una straordinaria opportunità - senza
pigrizie mentali, con grande coraggio e determinazione. Il ruolo dei
riformisti, in tutto questo, è ovviamente essenziale, visto che le
resistenze non mancano e, anzi, sono probabilmente
destinate ad aumentare.
lo psedo-movimento caro ai papalini del Ng non propone soluzioni serie
e fattibili (a meno di non voler restare lucidi) ma solo la denuncia
dei problemi sollevati dalla globalizzazione. Problemi, per altro, non
tutti figli del capitalismo. 
In questo, a ben vedere, forse non c'è niente di nuovo. E' la vecchia
disputa tra massimalisti e riformisti:  i primi bravi ad alzare il
dito verso la Luna... lasciando tuttavia ai secondi il compito di
creare il razzo vettore per andarci.
Del resto Armstrong era un riformista no? :)
E con questo buon anno a tutti!!!


Sì, la carta igienica. Ora usano l'unità
