Participatory Economics & the Bolivarian Revolution

By Michael Albert
July 19, 2016

The following is a transcription of a talk given at the foreign ministry lecture hall in Caracas,
Venezuela, July 18, 2016.
First, I want to thank you for inviting me here to speak.
Considering that I come from the the United States, which is the worlds foremost criminal state, the
worlds most hypocritical and violent state, the state with the most per capita prisoners in the world, the
state with the widest gap between rich and poor, the state that holds the record as the number one arms
merchant of the world, the state with the most educational facilities per capita yet also arguably the
most socially and politically ignorant population in the world, the only state to have used nuclear
weapons, and the only state that believes it owns the world, it is a remarkable testimony to your
generosity and hospitality that you would be here today to listen to me.
I only hope I can make it worthwhile.
My topic is economic vision for the future. I like to call the vision I believe in participatory economics.
Some might call it participatory socialism. Some might call it 21st century socialism. Whatever name
we settle on, what is it? I will try to provide a summary.
Suppose we consider ourselves, we here in this room, the workforce of a workplace that produces
bicycles. We have thrown out our past owners. We have to decide how we wish to proceed.
How shall we organize our workplace to make it a worthy model for a future economy?
First, I think we would each certainly want to have a say in decisions, so for that purpose we would
establish a workers council as a place for decisions to be made.
But how much influence should we each have in each decision?
We could opt for democracy. We each get one vote, majority rules. If we did, it would be great progress
compared to the brutal authoritarianism of corporate decision making, but I think it would not be ideal.
Not all decisions are alike. Some mainly involve just a few people, or even only one person. Others
affect mainly a group of people in a workplace, but not others even in that workplace. Others will
comparably affect everyone in a workplace.
To me, it doesnt make sense for everyone to have one vote about when I take a break for lunch. I
should decide that. But it also doesnt make sense for just me, or just a few of us, to alone decide how
long the work day is, or the pace of work. That affects everyone.
Self management seems to me to be a much better option even than majority rule. Each of us has a say
in decisions in proportion to the degree we will be affected by them. If we will be more affected, we get
more say. If we will be less affected, we get less say. Sometimes majority rule for a decision makes
sense. Other times, consensus, or two thirds needed makes more sense. And sometimes all are involved
but other times only some.
I like to call this approach collective self management. And I propose it for decision making in a good
economy. Perhaps someone will later raise a concern that employing self management will yield bad
decisions due to underutilizing some peoples expertise or expecting to much from other people, and if
so, we can discuss that.
But, to continue thinking through our vision, what about what economists call remuneration? How
much should each of us earn?
We should not get what we can take, which is a thugish norm that characterizes market exchange. We
should not get profits from private property, which is a capitalist approach. We shouldnt even get more
just because we are lucky enough to have better tools, or to have been born stronger or with special
talents.
No, instead I would suggest it is ethically and economically superior that we receive income for the
duration, the intensity, and the onerousness of socially valued work. If we work longer, or if we work
harder, or if we work under worse conditions, if we are producing things people want, we should get
more. I call that equitable remuneration. Perhaps later someone will raise the objection that this wont
provide needed incentives for people to be doctors and engineers and the likeand if so we can discuss
that.
But, for now, to proceed, suppose we set up our workplace and we have both workers collective self
management and also equitable remuneration. I should note that this often happens, at the outset, when
workers take over factories. However, suppose we also retain the old and familiar corporate division of
labor, which also often happens when workers take over factories.
Do we already have a worthy workplace? A 21st century socialist workplace?
Well, what is that old corporate division of labor that we retained? And what impact does it have?
A corporate division of labor is when about 20% of the workforce does essentially all the empowering
work, by which I mean they do all the work that conveys to whoever does it skills, information, social
connections, and confidence.
The other 80% does only rote and repetitive work which exhausts, deskills, and isolates whoever does
it.
So lets suppose you in the first batch of rows, over there, are the 20% who have a monopoly on the
empowering work of society. And lets suppose the rest of you do the remaining disempowering tasks.
I contend that in our workers council, you in this section who have a monopoly on empowering work
will come to council meetings prepared, confident, and with essential information. As a result you will
do nearly all the talking. You will set the agendas. Your desires will prevail. The rest of us will basically
be observers, inessential, bored.
In time, we who are inessential will stop attending, and at that point you who are empowered will raise
your own wages, eliminate self management, and otherwise improve your own conditions because you
will see yourselves as more intelligent, more important, more capable, and more worthy, rather than as
benefitting from monopolizing empowering work? And this will happen even against our initial
intentions. It will be a product of our circumstances.
So, it turns out, the corporate division of labor, regardless of any one not wanting it to happen, will
undo our self management and equitable remuneration. By its intrinsic properties the corporate division
of labor, that we mistakenly, and even reflexively preserved, will bring back class division and class
rulewhich is the outcome typical, I should note, of 20th century socialism.
Why do I say class rule? Because I believe the 20% are one class, who I call the coordinator class. And
the 80% are another class, who I call the working class. And the former rule the latter. And it is
precisely because of their positions n in the economy, not due to ownership, but due to the work each
does.
So, what is the alternative?
I call it balanced job complexes. The idea is that we each do a mix of tasks suited to us, but the tasks
are assembled so that we all do a fair mix of empowering and of disempowering work within our
overall assignment and as a result our jobs make us comparably ready to participate in decision
making, rather than making some of us dominate the rest in a class hierarchy.
And yes, this means all of us do some empowering work and that no one does only empowering work.
Perhaps later someone will raise the objection that this would be unproductive due to underutilizing
some peoples talents or due to other people having to do things they were not suited for, and, if so, we
can discuss it.
Okay, so now we have worker self management, equitable remuneration, and balanced job
complexes are we finished?
Well, I believe we have the core ingredients of a desirable workplace. But how do we connect up with
other workplaces? What is our approach to allocation?
The familiar answer is to utilize markets or central planning.
But I contend that markets and central planning are each in their own way flawed. Using either markets
or central planning creates tremendous pressures that undo the other three attributes we have to this
point arrived at.
Markets have too many faults to even summarize them all, but suffice to say that they compel the worst
kind of self seeking individualism, they employ remuneration for power and or for output, and they
require that each workplace limits costs and maximizes revenues at the expense of workers, ourselves,
so as to compete and not go out of business, behavior that requires that we opt for the corporate
division of labor to empower people suit d to the antisocial task to impose speed up, reduce air
conditioning, not clean up pollution, eliminate day care, and other such steps contrary to the
inclinations and interests of the workers.
Central planning of course imposes authoritarian hierarchy against self management, and in that
hierarchy, again, the division of having a dominant coordinator class and subordinate working class.
The alternative to these flawed approaches to allocation which by their intrinsic logic reverse our other
gains, I call participatory planning. This type of decentralized planning requires that we add consumers
neighborhood councils including their federation into regional communesto our set of institutions,
because , of course, allocation decisions affect consumers as well as workers.
Then the participatory planning process occurs broadly as follows
Councils propose their activity, both for production and consumption. The information is tallied and
circulated. Councils in turn refine their proposals, and this occurs again, and so on, through a number
of rounds. Of course there are additional features, but the basic idea is that there is a cooperative
negotiation of inputs and outputs, without competition and without authoritative imposition.
As with each other aspect of the vision, of course there is much more we can and wild need to say to
have full clarity, but in sum, we now have the essentials of an economic vision that I call participatory
economics, or that you might wish to call participatory socialism.
Of course we can refine the basic institutions, adapt them, and enrich them depending on the particulars
of a country, and on our future experiences, but these basics provide the essential vision.
But why does having a clear, shared economic vision matter?
I would contend that we need shared institutional vision to guide practice so that it leads where we
intend to arrive.
We need shared vision to provide informed hope.
We need shared vision so people can make the vision their own, add to it, refine it, judge it.
We need shared vision to avoid preserving class division and class rule.
We need shared vision to realize how self management needs participation, which in turn needs
confident workers who know what they desire, which in turn needs balanced job complexes and
collective cooperative allocation, but which also needs lots of training not least regarding aims, for
workers who until now have endured only disempowering circumstances.
As one insight, for example, perhaps the Bolivarian movement should clarify its aims and then have
something like the literacy campaign you earlier had but this time to involve the population both in
understanding, and then in augmenting clearly enunciated Bolivarian institutional aims.
As another insight, when nationalization occurs, this vision suggests it will suffer reductions in
productivity unless workers enjoy real self management with real participation and balanced job
complexes. If the nation nailed workplace differs little for the worker due to retaining the coordinator
class domination of empowering work, then workers will be alienated and even resist participating, as
well as disinclined to work hard.
You cant cross a half a bridge, but the fault doesnt reside in the half you built, nationalization, but
rather In the half you didnt build, greater participation, balanced job complexes, and participatory
planning.
Finally, one last comment on who we relate to and organize.
When we have a shared vision, when we have our eyes on the ultimate prize, we realize what it
requires. For example, we realize a new economy and society worth having has to appeal to far more
than half a population so we constantly prioritize reaching out to people who have not yet become
partners in the endeavor.
On an earlier trip to Venezuela I asked to meet with Bolivarian activists who were organizing to enlist
new allies from opposition neighborhoods and particularly among opposition youth.
I was told no effort went to that. It was a waste of time.
I think and hope clear vision can reverse that mood and facilitate such outreach which is, I think
without any doubt, essential, if the Bolivarian revolution is to advance.
Again, I thank you for taking this time to hear me out, and I hope you will raise your questions and
concerns so we can explore them together.