On Participatory Democracy Comments

...I am willing to grant that I may be both unrealistic and corrupted...

...Opposed to the idea that the poor, once organized, should "take their place alongside other ethnic and interest groups, bargaining for benefits within the framework of the Democratic party," Flacks lists three basic functions for the kind of "communitybased, self-determining organizations" he would like to see...

...Second, even if large sums are allocated to "poverty," these will be wasted, misspent or used for corrupt ends, unless the poor themselves control the allocation...

...As far as I know, Paul Goodman is the only one among us who has tried with any seriousness to show what participatory democracy looks like in practice...

...And indeed his rosy visions are still quite bureaucratic: "working conditions . . . overthrow of entrenched leadership...

...this, however, was based not on some abstract principle of unanimity but was a response to the history of the American Left...

...Whether this can be maintained as the organization increases in size, or comes under more severe attack, is in doubt...

...Assuming that participatory democracy, constantly refining itself, becomes the norm in grass-roots organizations, how does it establish its sway, how does it gain concrete embodiment, over the dominant social, political, and economic institutions...

...He is concerned with creating new models of democratic interaction in which the participants become transformed...

...In the student movement, the kind of "tactical" and "strategic" thinking by many in SDS has been terribly unrealistic...

...Certainly, these peo ple are "extremist," and create "back lashes," but an American Right can only succeed if the liberals stagnate...

...I do not want to be misunderstood—I believe in the power of direct action and personal resistance and am opposed to a politics of manipulation and take-over...

...But there is also a desperate need for radicals to stay independent of this coalition...

...He writes: Although the constituencies of these organizations include the most impoverished sectors of society, it is remarkable that—particularly in the Northern cities—the main activity of these organizations has not been focused on economic issues...

...What if the New Leftists are wrong in attacking the conception (or the timing) of coalition politics...

...But this is quite different from saying, as Flacks does, that the chief use of making decent institutions that work is to weld people into an organization...

...Is it a secret that, with a few exceptions, the American labor movement supports our armaments policy and the war in Vietnam...

...Not only should this be the goal of public policy, but I would venture the guess that if the poor were really mobilized into mass organizations, it would be their prime goal as well...

...It is unlikely to achieve much demilitarization...

...Second, it must actively initiate efforts in grassroots organization—not through the corrupt and reactionary urban machines, but through new political mechanisms...

...Factionalism, after all, can be healthy, if it is contained by a framework of common assumptions and purposes...

...In the meantime, ,. parallel institutions" will tend to remain "experiments," and many of us will continue to hold to the illusion that our main work must take place within "organized society...

...Both Marx and Franklin Roosevelt, when he was governor of New York, said that "government becomes administration...

...My point was, first, that such a redistribution is not going to occur without the political mobilization of the poor—and that "participatory democracy" would be useful for many reasons in such mobilization...

...a successful academic-freedom policy strengthens the role of students as a "class" in an ongoing relationship with the university...

...Would Flacks seriously deny that the top-down planning tradition of socialism played very nicely into the bureaucratized phony pluralism and real social engineering that we have today...

...Second, I wanted to suggest that the new radicals' understanding of "participatory democracy" should not be seen as flowing out of any particular tradition of radicalism —for instance, anarchism—but has been shaped by their own unique experi ence...

...But at least some of us feel that the problem is how to relate such acts of withdrawal to the process of revolutionary change...

...Incidentally, I recall that it was Bayard Rustin, in November, 1963, who first told white students at a SNCC conference to organize whites .. . Tom Kahn should not pretend to have discovered that "New Left intellectuals" are not interested in abolishing poverty...

...but I would say there is a tendency in this direction...

...But these approaches do not abolish poverty, even if they can alleviate some of its indignities and psychological damage...

...Third, programs based on social engineering will nol abolish the sense of impotence that accompanies poverty but only make it worse...

...The vision, as far as I can tell, remains much the same —self-determination, control, and independence for people who have been ruthlessly exploited, manipulated, policed, and made dependent all these years...

...They take the dominant system as all of a piece...

...To turn to Tom Kahn is to re-enter a debate that seems interminable...

...I, myself, do not know how "anarchist" I am prepared to be and am certain that my ambivalence is widely shared within the New Left...

...Flacks's reply.—Ed...

...tendencies toward demagoguery...

...Sometimes factionalism is repressed with a quite factional ferocity...

...Democratizing relations between the poor and their social workers—or, for that matter, achieving community control of impoverished and deteriorated school systems—is quite conceivable within the limiting framework of existing economic class relations...

...The tone of his remarks against the more anarchist position of Lynd, some of the radical students, SNCC, etc...

...A successful war on poverty results, by definition, in the abolition of the poor as a "class...

...Yet SNCC and CORE, the most anti-coalitionist of the civil rights organizations, now give rise to the slogan "black power" and interpret it in a fashion that, no matter what other defenses can be offered for it, hardly "offers a possible bridge between Negroes and other groups of poor or voiceless people...

...In the case of the poor, emphasis on their role within the welfare system may obscure the fundamental end of abolishing poverty and lead to a new accommodationism...

...institutions," "non-cooperation and going-it-alone," is not necessarily that of most participatory democrats— although there has been a tendency among some interpreters of the New Left to assume, somewhat romantically, that this orientation predominates...

...No, not if we take them as "publics," as opinion-blocs...

...and ultimately (l) demands for elections and recall of managers...

...Flacks is not only describing a state of affairs: he is endorsing it...

...It can be a stone against which issues are sharpened and clarified...

...That no such programs now exist is, of course, a consequence of the disintegration of the socialist tradition...

...When moods dominate, so can charismatic and even demagogic personalities.* My second major criticism has to do with the goals of the grass-roots organizations Flacks describes...

...In this list no mention is made of the aim I would opinion...

...Among radical youth, the chief motives for action and forces for solidarity have always been authenticity, directness, good sense, opportu• t,ity to do it oneself, and a naive (but true) vision that a decent society, like peace, would be easily attainable and simple in structure if only "they" would let us be...

...These publics do not have the power to change the course of this war...

...I did not think it needed saying that we are all after a massive redistribution of wealth...

...What if it turns out that the "participatory democrats" made strategic errors, helped to divide and weaken the civil rights, anti-poverty, and other reform movements of the midsixties, contributed to political defeats for the liberal coalition, unintentionally assisted in a resurgence of conservatism and, in the process, helped to isolate grass-roots organizations from possibilities for victories...

...My intention in writing this piece was not to refute Lynd but to indicate that I thought he had, to a certain extent, romanticized the experiments with "parallel institutions...

...pendence...

...I would suggest that the answer to that question hinges on another: who will control the planners and to what purpose...

...Isn't that how the French got out of Algeria...

...I agree that there has been a resurgence of conservatism and a defeat for the "liberal coalition...

...Questions of emphasis arise, however, because in politics language becomes the property of movements and moves away from dictionary neutrality...

...Richard Flacks's article is the most serious discussion of "participatory democracy" that has yet come out of the New Left, and with most of it I am not in fundamental disagreement...

...At any rate, he seems to consign me to a position I don't hold...

...Flacks does not mention that the more extreme Negro groups are also trying to get us out of Vietnam...

...2. "Black power" is the way SNCC and CORE have found to make participatory democracy concrete to bitter and cynical young people in the ghettos...

...We print below comments on this article by Tom Kahn and Paul Goodman, followed by Mr...

...What about a kind of education to make workmen more competent...

...It is likely—and I think Lynd etc, would agree—that on the way to this happy outcome there will be need for conventional coalition, for the election of peace candidates, New Politics, reviving Congress, and so forth...

...I have heard more than one SDS member complain that each convention of that organization is swept by a vague mood into which contending political positions are somehow absorbed...

...But if 10,000 students and 2,000 Negroes burn their draft cards, they will have changed the course of this war...

...The issue is not whether or not one can dispense with political activity—of course one cannot—but what is the meaning of "political...

...But I also believe what Goodman says about the war economy...

...Now (I hoped Tom Kahn would continue), the responsibility for achieving this lies largely with liberal politicians, labor leaders, liberal intellectuals, and rank-and-file activists...

...My point was precisely his—that the socialist movements ceased to be relevant because, as Goodman says, the "top-down planning tradition" captured control of them...

...Second, the liberal program, if successful, will create its own problems— in particular, it is likely to strengthen national trends toward topdown planning, centralization, and social engineering...

...does not take into account that we have already been through much of this debate in the past hundred years...

...It is true that SDS has generally contained a mood of anti-factionalism...

...In the case of students, the emphasis on democratic relations with faculty and administration is a value in itself...

...First, a left-wing movement, with its own expanding constituency, is a most important mechanism for keeping the liberals in motion...

...repeating them here is not entirely relevant...

...Workers' management was the issue in the middle of the 19th century, when the workers were already quite educated and sophisticated...

...The position I hoped Tom Kahn would take is this: This society, because it is militarized, corporation-dominated, and shot through with racism is drifting, and sometimes sliding, toward both international and internal disaster...

...Are we wrong in thinking that one essential condition for transforming that economy is a radical movement, concerned with organizing a political opposition, sensi• tive to problems of strategy, and continually learning how to use the levers of power and change...

...I am troubled by another aspect of "participatory democracy," at least as I have seen it operate in some New Left groups: its emphasis on consensus...

...When he says that participatory democrats "seek to extend the conception of citizenship beyond the political sphere to all institutions," he speaks in the best traditions of the democratic socialist movements...

...Third, it must recognize that it has to confront and defeat those political forces which emanate from racist and militarist institutions in the society...

...I find it incredible that someone who imagines himself to be politically astute should blame radicals because they have been too insistent on radical goals...

...it has not turned out brilliantly...

...And authenticity is indispensable...

...Is this the zenith of participation...

...He speaks of building a sense of community between staff and rankandfile, facilitating self-expression, enabling people to gain dignity by participation, rotation of leadership, etc...

...but meantime the Vietnamese are dying like flies...

...Is not the existence of such a movement the only way to give form and meaning to acts of resistance, withdrawal, inventiveness...

...Having defined participatory democracy in terms upon which we can agree, Flacks proceeds to assign it to specific political goals and to groups promoting them...

...This group must, first of all, develop a comprehensive program that can recapture the imagination of those groups now disaffected with it— especially ghettoized Negroes, urban ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and rank-and-file trade unionists...

...It was still an issue in 1905 in Russia...

...One can plausibly argue that nothing else was politically feasible, that the members would not fight for something bigger, etc...

...He further misreads me if he believes that I optimistically expect the labor movement to take up workers' control as an issue...

...Richard Flacks doesn't pay much mind to history...

...A kind of organization of work to encourage invention and initiative...

...I find it curious, perhaps revealing...

...The General Assembly of the Houyhnhnms 'exhorts' Gulliver's master to get rid of him .. . Gulliver's master is somewhat unwilling to obey, but the 'exhortation' (a Houyhnhnm, we are told, is never compelled to do anything, he is merely 'exhorted' or 'advised') cannot be disregarded...

...but I cannot see how tens of thousands of draft card burnings will end the war, after observing the way our leaders respond to the burnings of elderly women, gentle Quakers, young Catholics, and Buddhist monks and nuns...

...This is an odd statement...

...Goodman thoroughly misreads my brief allusion to the "socialist tradition...

...But the elimination of poverty is a matter of economic policy —for our purposes, a matter of national politics...

...Thus, the orientation toward "parallel...

...SNCC argues that it is not their responsibility to carry this vision across to white America: this is the responsibility of white radicals...

...All of this will be true whether the machinery of the state is controlled by the managerial elite or by the "coalition" Kahn advocates...

...This takes us right back to the Stalinist front organizations of the thirties, or even worse, to the beautiful Stalinist disposition to enter honest groups and take them over for some other purpose...

...But their hope is, I think, that non-cooperation and going-it-alone will withdraw energy from the present abstract Sovereign power with its class of politicians, will threaten it and inevitably heighten conflict...

...I was trying to ask whether we could see, now, any changes in the consciousness of workers suggesting that "workers' control" might reemerge and what forms such a new consciousness might take...

...He views the "ideolComment by Tom Kahn ogy of participatory democracy" rather exclusively as the expression of the New Left, with its distinctive opposition to coalition politics (at least for now) in favor of guiding independent grass-roots organizations of the dispossessed...

...Marx won out (by administrative maneuvering), took over the socialist movement, and led it down the primrose path...

...None of this has prevented quite active factions from flourishing within the organization...

...In the first part of his article, he focuses on internal relations, for instance, those prevailing within "the movement...

...but to those who retain a democratic socialist conviction, the values suggested by "participatory democracy" are more crucial than ever...

...And how has "participatory democracy" here been "useful in effectively criticizing `char ismatic' styles of leadership...

...In a society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behavior is public been struggling over issues of control, self-determination, and inde...

...When human beings are governed by 'thou shalt not,' the individual can practice a certain amount of eccentricity...

...Therefore the idea of take-over is discouraging to the young—who needs it...

...For either New Left intellectuals are misreading the goals of those poor with whom they have developed contact, or, more likely, their contacts are confined to a stratum of the most ambitious and rebellious poor, those seeking liberation from the psychological and cultural straitjacket of poverty through participation in a limited political process that provides a sense of power and an opportunity for relations with middleclass people, government bureaucrats...

...Marx at least thought that he wanted the State to wither way...

...The counterposition is his...

...Lynd etc...

...That their ideals have been inadequately served, shunted aside, and sometimes betrayed is certainly true...

...Flacks promises us that it will be very "exciting" when the labor move ment asks for "employee participa tion...

...They have, rather, •In This connection, I have been struck by a passage in George Orwell's essay concerning Gulliver's Travels: "Part IV of Gulliver's Travels is a picture of an anarchistic society, not governed by law in the ordinary sense, but by the dictates of 'Reason,' which are voluntarily accepted by everyone...

...These were the very issues on which Marx fought Bakunin and the anarchist unions...

...surely think of themselves as political and concerned with power...

...Ultimately" the workers will change this...

...Just as students should have a voice in university affairs, so should the poor have a voice in the war on poverty...

...For some reason, Goodman chose to read my half-formed thoughts about the sociological possibilities for participatory democracy as thoroughly alien to his own way of thinking—he even seemed to find Stalinist dispositions along the way...

...But I am afraid that the experience of the students—both black and white—in these past few years has been that simple, authentic, and direct acts of resistance and invention do not end wars, abolish racism, redistribute wealth, or recreate the universities...

...the radical movement, as a whole, did take Flacks's position...

...It is a possibility for degeneration somewhat in the way that the "democratic centralism" of the Leninists has its tendency to degeneration...

...He points out that the radical students have been the leaders in the fight on our foreign policy...

...but it can be said, at the very least, that the tactics adopted by forces with whom the New Left identifies not only provided a rationale for conservative interests but helped shift the political mood of the nation...

...these too take the system as all of a piece and want direct control at home, not ultimately but now...

...Unfortunately, as he says, "I don't know how to make this happen...

...and, not ultimately bqt beginning now and gradually, create a climate in which selfreliant groups can prevent the Stateclass from interfering with the interesting functions of life—for the State is not an interesting function...

...Their present phase begins with losses of membership, financial support, and staff—the product, in turn, of programmatic failure, frustration, and defeat...

...The reasons for these reverses are many and complex...

...It is important to remember that Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick rose to leadership at a time when their organizations were in decline, that this decline affected most of the civil rights movement but most acutely these organizations, because of their increasingly sectarian and anti-whiteliberal politics...

...Participatory democracy is good for the poor because it is good for everybody...

...Consequently, if democracy is to survive and prevail, there must be a recalcitrant, autonomous, self-directed radical movement, engaged in building independent centers of power (black, white, etc...

...That the "anticoalitionists" have "assisted a resurgence of conservatism" is not, of course, a "hypothesis" on his part—he seems to be convinced of this and should have said so...

...But some where along the line the socialists for got it...

...Probably, some radicals, socialists, and pacifists should be involved directly in this as a force for integrity and clearheadedness...

...Flacks says, "American indus trial unions have had to sacrifice the struggle for control...

...1 wanted to encourage those with his perspective to offer—more concretely and less rhetori cally—models for the practice of participatory democracy...

...What is this "had Comment by Paul Goodman to...

...This probably includes a decisive break with the present Administration on foreign policy, and an aggressively independent program with respect to economic policy and social legislation...

...There is a modest hope of staying this drift—it lies in a re-invigoration of the liberal wing of the Democratic party...

...I am not now making such an indictment of the New Left, merely stating a hypothesis for the sake of argument, Granted this assumption, how significant would "participatory democracy" be, if it described the inner organizational life of merely a handful of people whose opinions could find no echo in the larger society...

...Instead, I hear him telling SDS and SNCC to do the liberals' work for them, to cease being independent, to coalesce around programs that are meant to deceive the people and are not intended to achieve genuine reform...

...There is a tendency on the part of New Leftists to compare the relations of students to the university with those of the poor to the welfare state...

...The comparison breaks down, however, at a crucial point...

...S. Many people in SDS are dissatis fled because "participatory democracy" has not been fully realized in the internal life of the organization...

...By this they do not mean simply "love and reason" or "consensus," but rather a fully participative membership and a coherent and rational decision-making structure...

...But a connection must be made—the connection between internal and external politics...

...Will it be the managerial-technocratic elite spawned by the corporate world, or will it be the unions, the civil rights movement, the advocates of a democratic foreign policy, the deprived in our cities, the aged poor, the liberal university forces—in short, the components of the still divided and incomplete coalition for which Flacks has little use at present...

...This I don't understand...

...I also do not think that we are interested in "take-overs...

...A subtle if uncalculated authoritarianism runs through this quest for unanimity...

...In the name of anti-factionalism, minority viewpoints are not so much voted down as gently obliterated...

...If the poor are brought to greater political consciousness and activity, they will be less likely to sink into middle-class complacency once they leave poverty...

...I had not noticed that SDS was overly strategic in its thinking...

...But one question is in order...

...The new climate may encourage desperate and even violent responses in the ghettos, but it will not be hospitable to the growth of viable grass-roots movements along the lines of participatory democracy...

...In the November-December 1966 issue of DISSENT appeared an article by Richard Flacks entitled "On the Uses of Participatory Democracy...

...It is much more likely to foster disillusionment and a bitter, ingrown style of organizational life...

...In general, SDSers have felt that the issues raised by "fac tions" could be absorbed—that it was more important to emphasize what people shared than to fight to the finish about the issues (usually tactical) which divided them...

...Flacks defines "participatory democracy" in a way all democrats can accept, namely, that "men must share in the decisions which affect their lives...

...the thrust of SNCC, SDS, and similar efforts with the poor is to help people feel free...

...helping self-determining communities to grow, attempting to undermine the legitimacy of militarism and the nation-state, arguing for socialism, workers' control, and the abolition of corporate power...

...What tradition...

...Problems of paternalism, powerlessness, and the like are encountered in both cases...

...All of us agree with Goodman—"decent institutions that work" should be created now...

...And indeed they should...

...I don't know how to make this happen, but remarks like Flacks's don't help...

...It is gratuitous for him to say that parallel institutions are not a substitute for "political activity...

...Flacks points with satisfaction to the fact that SNCC used much of the "same rhetoric and organizing technique" as SDS...

...Some of what he says may still be true anyway, but he should argue it more tentatively and with some new twists...

...Should this occur, then, to paraphrase Flacks's observation on the New Left, "the democratizing revolts which it now catalyzes are likely to be abortive...

...I. Kahn formulates a cunning critique of the "sectarianism" of the "anti-coalitionists...

...I have some questions, or different emphases...

...when they are supposedly governed by 'love' or 'reason,' he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else...

...but it seems obvious to me that this is a consequence of both the Vietnam War and the disgraceful default of the liberal leadership...

...But it is senseless to palm the problem off as if it had not been the classical problem, and to talk now in rosy future terms...

...b) relevant to certain changes in consciousness which seem to be occuring in many parts of our society...

...But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law...

...National planning is on the agenda of American political and corporate elites, Flacks points out, and "the question for the Left has become how to democratize that planning...

...That will be to the general good...

...Now I do not wish to maintain that this is the state of affairs in organizations like SDS which try to practice "participatory democracy" ("love" and "reason") with a minimum of "formal" rules...

...When Stokely Carmichael proclaims that he is renouncing all of his white friends, where, for all practical purposes, lies the difference between his brand of "participatory democracy" and black nationalist ideology...

...This illustrates very well the totalitarian tendency which is explicit in the anarchist or pacifist vision of society...

...The first point I was trying to make is that the emphasis which the young radicals in the Negro and student movements have placed on the notion of "participatory democracy" has been: a) important as both inspiration and standard for their work...

...Their response has been the call for "black power," exercises in the rhetoric of violence, intensification of divisions within the movement, and opposition to the civil rights bill—in the last case, contributing in some measure to the first major legislative defeat for the civil rights forces in years...

...There are hints in Goodman, in Lynd, and elsewhere, but in the absence of a coherent analysis of this problem, there is a tendency to drift back to a more conventional politics...

...Either that—or, more likely, I failed to make my position clear...

...I am quite convinced that, at present, even the most cynical observer would be likely to conclude that SDS, whatever its other faults, is one of the most "democratic" voluntary organizations in American life, whether by democracy one meant opportunity to choose among competing leaderships, or member participation in decisions, or decentralization of authority...

...Richard Flacks Replies to Paul Goodman and Tom Kahn Paul Goodman didn't pay too much attention to my article...

...If these were the things Tom Kahn were arguing for, I would feel polit ically comfortable with him...

...Flacks seems almost oblivious that we have a war economy where for more than 20 years more than half of new investment has been in armaments...

...And a say in the social utility of the product to which a man gives his life and his brains...

...Although some of these concerns recall unsuccessful experiments in utopian socialism, they are not outside the realm of political reality...

...But resistance and inventiveness are inspiriting...

...place at the top: the abolition of poverty...

...In my opinion, this is not irrelevant to the fact that they now directly resist lying college administrators, want real participation in university affairs, set up a free university if necessary...

...The arguments for "coalition pol itics" have been made...

...Would not purity then become a sign of impotence...

...That power could be distributed in such a fashion as to give Flacks, the New Leftists, and the "black power" adherents some control over local school construction programs, while the corporate planners continue to determine the contours of the national economy...

...The degree to which planning will be democratic and decentralized depends upon the alignment and weight of national political power...