B.

6 But won't decisions made by individuals

with their own money be the best?
anarchism.pageabode.com /afaq/secB6.html

This question refers to an argument commonly used by capitalists to justify the fact that
investment decisions are removed from public control under capitalism, with private
investors making all the decisions. Clearly the assumption behind this argument is that
individuals suddenly lose their intelligence when they get together and discuss their
common interests. But surely, through debate, we can enrich our ideas by social
interaction. In the marketplace we do not discuss but instead act as atomised individuals.

This issue involves the "Isolation Paradox," according to which the very logic of individual
decision-making is different from that of collective decision-making. An example is the
"tyranny of small decisions." Let us assume that in the soft drink industry some companies
start to produce (cheaper) non-returnable bottles. The end result of this is that most, if not
all, the companies making returnable bottles lose business and switch to non-returnables.
Result? Increased waste and environmental destruction.

This is because market price fails to take into account social costs and benefits, indeed it
mis-estimates them for both buyer/seller and to others not involved in the transaction.
This is because, as Schumacher points out, the "strength of the idea of private enterprise
lies in its terrifying simplicity. It suggests that the totality of life can be reduced to one
aspect - profits..." [Small is Beautiful, p. 215] But life cannot be reduced to one aspect
without impoverishing it and so capitalism "knows the price of everything but the value of
nothing."

Therefore the market promotes "the tyranny of small decisions" and this can have
negative outcomes for those involved. The capitalist "solution" to this problem is no
solution, namely to act after the event. Only after the decisions have been made and their
effects felt can action be taken. But by then the damage has been done. Can suing a
company really replace a fragile eco-system? In addition, the economic context has been
significantly altered, because investment decisions are often difficult to unmake.

In other words, the operations of the market provide an unending source of examples for
the argument that the aggregate results of the pursuit of private interest may well be
collectively damaging. And as collectives are made up of individuals, that means
damaging to the individuals involved. The remarkable ideological success of "free market"
capitalism is to identify the anti-social choice with self-interest, so that any choice in the
favour of the interests which we share collectively is treated as a piece of self-sacrifice.
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However, by atomising decision making, the market often actively works against the self-
interest of the individuals that make it up.

Game theory is aware that the sum of rational choices do not automatically yield a rational
group outcome. Indeed, it terms such situations as "collective action" problems. By not
agreeing common standards, a "race to the bottom" can ensue in which a given society
reaps choices that we as individuals really don't want. The rational pursuit of individual
self-interest leaves the group, and so most individuals, worse off. The problem is not bad
individual judgement (far from it, the individual is the only person able to know what is
best for them in a given situation). It is the absence of social discussion and remedies that
compels people to make unbearable choices because the available menu presents no
good options.

By not discussing the impact of their decisions with everyone who will be affected, the
individuals in question have not made a better decision. Of course, under our present
highly centralised statist and capitalist system, such a discussion would be impossible to
implement, and its closest approximation -- the election process -- is too vast,
bureaucratic and dominated by wealth to do much beyond passing a few toothless laws
which are generally ignored when they hinder profits.

However, let's consider what the situation would be like under libertarian socialism, where
the local community assemblies discuss the question of returnable bottles along with the
workforce. Here the function of specific interest groups (such as consumer co-operatives,
ecology groups, workplace Research and Development action committees and so on)
would play a critical role in producing information. Knowledge, as Bakunin, Kropotkin, etc.
knew, is widely dispersed throughout society and the role of interested parties is essential
in making it available to others. Based upon this information and the debate it provokes,
the collective decision reached would most probably favour returnables over waste. This
would be a better decision from a social and ecological point of view, and one that would
benefit the individuals who discussed and agreed upon its effects on themselves and their
society.

In other words, anarchists think we have to take an active part in creating the menu as
well as picking options from it which reflect our individual tastes and interests.

It needs to be emphasised that such a system does not involve discussing and voting on
everything under the sun, which would paralyse all activity. To the contrary, most
decisions would be left to those interested (e.g. workers decide on administration and
day-to-day decisions within the factory), the community decides upon policy (e.g.
returnables over waste). Neither is it a case of electing people to decide for us, as the
decentralised nature of the confederation of communities ensures that power lies in the
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hands of local people.

This process in no way implies that "society" decides what an individual is to consume.
That, like all decisions affecting the individual only, is left entirely up to the person
involved. Communal decision-making is for decisions that impact both the individual and
society, allowing those affected by it to discuss it among themselves as equals, thus
creating a rich social context within which individuals can act. This is an obvious
improvement over the current system, where decisions that often profoundly alter people's
lives are left to the discretion of an elite class of managers and owners, who are supposed
to "know best."

There is, of course, the danger of "tyranny of the majority" in any democratic system, but
in a direct libertarian democracy, this danger would be greatly reduced, for reasons
discussed in section I.5.6 ( Won't there be a danger of a "tyranny of the majority" under
libertarian socialism?).

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