FREEDOM, AUTHORITY, PARTICIPATION

...The problem is to institutionalize democratic types of control and organization in such a way that the new institutions cannot set themselves up as governing elites or merge with them...

...309...

...Here we come once more to the problems of "system...

...Harold Laski was merely witty but not profound when he said that experts should be on tap, not on top...

...By "system" we mean an interconnected set of institutions, each functioning to permit all others to function properly...

...I shall cite one source that, because it may not be guessed easily, is especially significant: In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and antagonisms, we shall have an 294 association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all...

...When does the public ethos prevail over the private conscience...

...Moreover, these councils are split locally...

...In the Soviet Union managers frequently have no incentive to follow demand, and hence merely fulfill the quantitative "plan target"—with the consequence that for a month people can buy only gloves of one size...

...not being alienated, they will have neither different interests nor different opinions, but will gladly cooperate in any reasonable assignment that the government decides upon...

...nor is it an economy that has merely been rid of capitalistic parasites...

...But they did not abolish exploitation, did not promote selfadministration, did not increase productivity beyond the rate that was to be expected through technological advances, and have left the working population woefully behind their Western colleagues with respect to both income and supply, not to speak of freedom and happiness...

...we need not discuss them here, because new techniques that a socialist government might add to these will not make a substantial difference...

...Even more advanced countries, such as the Soviet Union, have had crash programs rather than an integrated plan...

...they may topple one kind of 308 dictatorship only to fall prey to another...

...However, the men with ideas usually are not the doers, and the so-called power elite is divided into at least three different strata: —the experts: scientists, technologists, officers, professionals...

...that it can dismiss unsympathetic teachers, officers, civil servants, judges who may have tenure...

...According to David Spitz democracy has "two ingredients...

...The mere fact that material worries have been removed may bring psychological and family troubles to the fore...

...But it should be admitted that these will be jobs that must be filled after the reservoir of generous, public-spirited volunteers has been exhausted...

...But the system is enormously wasteful and frustrating...

...The state elites are more acutely aware of the dynamics of power than of the human desires of the awakening nation...

...In the following pages, we shall discuss problems that have arisen for socialism out of the conflict between the will of the whole and the will of the parts: how much freedom may smaller associations (the shop, the region, the profession, the ethnic or religious fraternity) reserve vis -a-vis the big association (the nation, an international authority...

...one gives the system the benefit of every doubt and does not ask whether perhaps its behavior indicates a change in its nature...

...But consider abortion: if the right to have an abortion implies the right to have it in a public clinic (as I believe it does)—by what right do I campaign for a law that would force Catholics to contribute, through their tax payments, to acts their religion forbids...

...but a moment's reflection will show that they are inadequate to define socialism...

...The bureaucracy will usually serve the system in which it works, but it does not create a system...

...The leader who claims to represent the general will is most dangerous...

...So did Mussolini, so did Hitler...

...it also is a necessary agent of public services...

...Recent experience even indicates that such problems may lead to asocial, antagonistic behavior...

...Further reforms would be "structural," i.e., instead of alleviating the condition of individuals they would change the way the system operates...

...A rapid rate of investment reduces the resources available to consumers and strengthens the arguments of scarcity, that the rate of surplus value must be increased, management given more authority, and there is not enough to allow equal rations for all...

...After the death of Stalin, Beria found out that a modern country like Russia cannot be governed by the police, and Malenkov that it cannot be governed by the economic and administrative bureaucracy...

...Thus, for most people capitalism in Russia ended in November 1917, and socialism began shortly thereafter...

...The system, operative in Germany, and partly in France and other areas of the Common Market, involves shop stewards and trade unions in questions of management, gives them access to the books and a strong voice in personnel questions and, where public officials also sit on the board, the chance to form majorities...

...The socialist plant manager need not strive for maximum profit, nor seek the most "costeffective" means...

...It was prominent in the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and in the German revolution of 1918...

...Even if a socialist government did emerge nonviolently from ordinary election processes, it must fear a coup or foreign intervention...

...Socialism has become (again, as in Marx's own time) a cultural movement striving not only for the improvement of material conditions but for the emancipation of the individual personality...

...To call all this "socialism" is to misuse a good word...

...Modernizing nationalism in some countries goes by the name of "socialism," but in others, as in Taiwan now and in Japan before World War II, under the name of a corporate economy...

...The Councils: a revolutionary organization that became an executive organ in the Russian revolution, and then also the model for movements in Europe...

...Under socialism governments will continue to blunder and people will continue to want to control them and commit their own blunders...

...It also leaves the plan bureaucrats in control of the industry and fails to reflect other concerns of the masses—as consumers, as members of a church, etc...

...The more urgent the need for speedy development and the more compelling the thrust for national power, the less will the leaders feel inclined to develop democracy...

...Nationalization is not socialization, and a plan must have a purpose: it may be designed to enhance the development of man's potentialities or it may be the instrument of national ambitions...

...None of these measures is socialist in itself...

...Khrushchev, when asked why there were no free elections in the Soviet Union, snapped back: "What if the people vote wrong...

...An excess of bureaucratic virtues may be harmful, even oppressive, and if decision-making is left to the bureaucracy, the system may become selfserving and unresponsive to the needs of the community...

...but a socialist government need not take these catastrophes as God-given laws of nature against which man is powerless...

...We have a number of conventions by which we abide because they are practical and their observance does not impinge upon either our individual rights or the system we have accepted...

...True, they proposed to abolish "private property," but not to put state property in its place...

...The Bolsheviks had to retreat from War Communism when the radical impetus of 1917 was exhausted and was followed by a period of stabilization...

...I do not recommend any specific set of institutions, organization schemes, or election procedures...

...If socialists and their allies have reason to foresee a substantial majority for a program of large-scale structural reforms, their campaign may assume the symbolism of revolution...

...he may be able to reduce labor time instead of dismissing workers or seeking additional outlets...

...Socialism has inherited this emancipatory dream from a long tradition of democratic revolutionary thinkers...

...These conditions require a different notion of efficiency than exists today...

...The Continued Relevance of Class War MY CONCEPTION of democratic socialism is as far from revisionism as from utopian visions of a world without problems and conflict...

...In the Western nations, we have a long tradition of independent judges, an independent press, the freedom of the universities, or undiminished rights of assembly and of parliamentary representation...

...An Egyptian father to his son, about 1400 B.C...

...But if the society is not stagnant, new claimant groups might appear or new problems of adjustment might be discovered...

...Pluralism SOCIALISTS ATTEMPT to expand the jurisdiction of public bodies and to institutionalize their material achievements...

...It can only promise that burdens and benefits will be shared as evenly as possible...

...Against this kind of panic reaction, Marx's prediction was correct for 100 years: population movement and the rate of inventions did adjust to the capabilities of a given economic system...

...The public corporation model, preferred in England, where control is in the hands of an authority or public board...

...Is it necessary to mobilize the symbolism of revolution in order to give the working classes of the West the assurance that the system works for them...

...Participatory experience on the local and factory level, therefore, is welcome as a recruiting school for the trade union and party activities...

...In defense of democracy Rousseau put forward the sophistry that the elector does not vote his interest but what he thinks the majority will guess to be the general will...

...It means direct participation on the lower echelons but indirect participation through delegates on the higher levels...

...This is certainly true as long as socialism has not been totally victorious, and even during this period socialists will not rely exclusively on parliamentary institutions but have to pursue their, goals through active, ever-renewed movements to counter the capitalistic-oligarchic influences on the liberal-representative state...

...To the first question Robert Heilbroner has answered: What about the suffering that is prevented by a revolution (the unborn children, or simply what Marx describes in the first volume of Das Kapita...

...I do not consider Marx and Engels oracles, but it is significant that these alleged "collectivists" placed the individual ahead of the collective...

...equality of citizens' sacrifices and services...

...These are indeed characteristic of states that now call themselves "socialist...

...It means to create a situation where those advocating repeal cannot easily be accommodated...

...after it, there would follow a period of intensified class struggles, in the course of which the working class would expand its power in all areas: press, business, politics, the judiciary, the school, the theater, etc...

...states and municipalities have always built parks, sewers, harbors, waterways, roads, etc.— certainly to help business but also to make the environment more livable for all...

...It is for the political leaders to choose, to bargain among different interests, to hammer out a balance that can then be presented as the "general will...

...Private enterprise, such as small businesses and family farms, are not incompatible with an economy whose big industries, utilities, and financial services are nationalized, and which also encourages cooperative enterprise...

...To Control the Controllers SOME HINTS must be given on the structure of the socialist economy...

...Trade unions and consumer organizations confront corporate power...

...I am concerned with the involvement of the greatest number of people in the management of their destiny on all levels of economic, cultural, and political decisionmaking...

...nor has it prevented the growth of a sprawling bureaucracy on the county, regional, and national levels, whose in-fighting is a burden to the country...

...Nevertheless, there are two sides to this problem...

...They aim to make people responsible for their own destiny and to give everybody a chance to fulfill his or her aspirations as a person...

...it also makes participatory schemes the playground of sectarians and fanatics...

...This is, of course, not utopian...

...Only later, when this was narrowed down to the dictatorship of the Politbureau, was the myth of the salvationist dictatorship created...

...In all the so-called socialist countries revolutionary or quasi-revolutionary action may be required to overthrow the oppressive political dictatorship...

...the answer is to find means of making the system work for the majority...

...they are also launching pads for further demands, and they support the movement for a more comprehensive change of the system...

...This leaves me with the question I slurred over a moment ago—what justification does the majority have when it passes over the will of the minority to impose structural changes...

...Even where socialists and their allies may have won slight majorities, they must try to avoid the impression of revolutionary inroads but should quietly strengthen their positions in all democratic institutions, increase the pressure of mass organizations, and then, having proved that they can govern, ask for a clear mandate for major structural changes...

...In the West nationalizations have been more selective, and some are still on the agenda...

...This stabilizes the revolutionary regime and relieves it of the need to justify itself again and again...

...control is imposed by the bureaucracy that dominates the industrial managers by political means, for instance, a strong dictatorship...

...Under "market socialism" consumers would have a choice of goods...

...Also,as Orlando Patterson remarks in his outstanding 305 Ethnic Chauvinism, "a big impersonal state may be a better guardian of libertarian values than a small unit with its cronyism...

...These seem to be merely formal determinations that say nothing about the economic system and which class is to rule...

...Comparing the two systems, one feels entitled to ask: Was it necessary to go through the painful process of revolution and to submit to bloody dictatorships only to end with a working class lagging behind those that had not made a proletarian revolution...

...but when they wrote the Manifesto they still saw the socialist revolution as the direct outgrowth of the democratic revolution...

...Nor should this problem be shrugged off with assertions that under socialism people will be different...

...It seeks a society where merit and character are the only marks of distinction...

...No one has the right to make such assumptions...

...Kautsky distinguished the social from the political revolution, which in his time meant the establishment of majority rule...

...In a capitalist society, cartels, on the other hand, may serve as a tool to organize a market, or the government may act as buyer of last resort to set prices and production goals...

...This includes the customary division of power among executive, legislative and judiciary, between federal and regional, but also between planning agencies and claimant groups, between economic and political authorities, employing agencies and producers, etc...

...It does not mean direct participation of the governed in the process of government, but it gives the representatives of interest groups access to the levers of decision-making...

...Hitler's war machine was powered by a planned "command economy...

...In contrast to the liberal-republican state, the democratic state is not a limited state...

...Inevitably, therefore, economic questions will have to be thrashed out in the political arena, and this can only be done in a democratic way...

...But the classes that were most active in pushing the revolution on to its consummation were not the ones that finally substituted themselves for the ancien regime...

...They could not conceive of a society (much less a state) that would set itself goals other than those that the citizens themselves had made their own...

...It is well known that Marx used British government reports in writing Das Kapital, and to this day practically all information on capitalistic malfunctions are based on official surveys, reports, investigations—it could not be different...

...It took a politician like Khrushchev to organize power, and when he turned against the party, he was ousted too...

...If the social revolution was to improve the living conditions of working families, the slow, undramatic advances in the West have added up to more than the leap in the East...

...Any public official who has to think about the future of energy supply must become impatient with the influence of the oil companies...

...in fact only the West has been modernized by spontaneous social forces rather than by the will of the princes...

...Where there is no tradition of democratic government and socialists come to power in the wake of civil war against a dictatorial or colonial regime, the chances for immediate transition to a left-wing dictatorship are greater, but a heavy price has to be paid...

...This hope of rivalry has been translated into a political theory called "pluralism...

...The argument hinges on the assumption that someone (the philosopher, the dictator, the party) knows what is the interest of the whole...

...Dedication and spontaneity come in bursts, or at best waves, and there is no guarantee that only the capable and well-intentioned will constitute themselves as the permanent avant-garde...

...Nationalism is their justification, with socialism added on as an 303 ideology, and both identified with their own usurpation of power...

...For socialists it is better to claim that they represent nothing more than the will of the majority (if they do), and democracy means to carry out that will...

...kings gave commercial privileges to their courtiers, established •royal manufactures, sent the poor to workhouses, and drove the peasants off their meager holdings—under pretext of making them more efficient, in the name of national power, and for the sake of higher economic rationality...

...Eventually a point is reached where the haphazard, historical gains must be consolidated and systematized—if only to prevent them from getting into each other's bailiwicks...

...Characteristic of all codetermination schemes and also the Yugoslav form of the council scheme is: participation on the lowest, most direct level, the shop...

...we can speed and plan the development of resources...

...As F. A. Hayek has pointed out, the notion of law has moved in recent times from rules of conduct, mostly restrictive, to substantive commands, mostly counterdiscriminatory...

...the free play of opinions [and] the constitutional responsibility of the rulers to the ruled," and Robert Maclver calls it "a way to determine who shall govern and, broadly, to what ends...

...Contrary to widespread misconceptions, socialism may not open up a period of 296 unrivaled development...

...Revolution is a powerful symbol...

...A combination of the council and the syndicalist systems has been used in Yugoslavia...

...equality for each citizen of basic rewards (the national dividend...

...It is vital to tell the voters the truth, for introdifcing socialism behind their backs would only entail a prolonged dictatorship...

...Their "association" was supposed to abolish the relationship of property between capital and worker, between dead and living labor...

...It is not a predesigned plan that can only be accepted or rejected in toto...

...Again, to some extent this is achieved today through union activity: if a bulldozer operator is given an air-conditioned cabin, the marginal decrease in his discomfort may not be matched by increased productivity...

...Marx did not know about erosion and pollution, and he took the threatening exhaustion of natural resources all too lightly...

...He may not need to earn the amortization of invested capital...

...In most anthologies this sentence is the conclusion of the Communist Manifesto for it is indeed the end of its theoretical exposition...

...But whatever the mechanics of forming a majority, there is no virtue in blinking the fact that its will overrides the will of the minority...

...Moreover, the syndicalist and participatory schemes offer little protection against parochialism, industry egoism and communal rivalry...

...New ventures are introduced piecemeal, and often without the clear awareness that their full benefits could become visible only in a totally different context...

...The Russian and East European revolutions have also made the society of these countries more egalitarian and have given the workers security and welfare from 302 the cradle to the grave...

...Precisely because I don't expect paradise to break out, I must be prepared to allow conflict, movement, evolution, even revolution...

...How much discipline or obedience can the larger community expect from the smaller and from the individual...

...But from now on we must husband and plan our resources so that the threat of scarcity may no longer be used as an excuse for inequality...

...This presumably entitles them to disregard the minority, or even to prevent it from ever becoming a majority again...

...In most of the Western countries we now have a system that combines representative government and civic freedom with welfarestate institutions—partly nationalized industries, guidance and manipulation or direct controls, public services, redistribution of income through taxation and services, but, on the whole, still criteria of profitability for economic activity...

...Only recently, the rejection by Congress of the proposed Consumer Agency was greeted as "a blow against overweening bureaucracy...

...Nor should we be oblivious of recent examples in the U.S...

...We come here to a fundamental distinction that used to be taken for granted in the older socialist literature but became blurred in the minds of our contemporaries because of the brilliant imagery of the political revolutions in Russia 1917, China 1949, and Cuba 1959, all based more or less explicitly on the model of the Great French Revolution of 1789...

...304 —the bureaucrats: administrators, corporate directors, civil servants...

...If socialism is to develop a social dynamism, it will need all the collaboration and selfcriticism, all the participation in the selection of leaders and in the formulation of programs it can get...

...It guarantees a certain diversity of impulses that are brought to bear upon the decision-making process, and to that extent is a safeguard against arbitrary government...

...Where no tradition of democracy exists, technocrats and bureaucrats are seen as pioneers of progress...

...So far dictatorships have not raised the living standards in their countries, and when the time comes that technological and financial infusions achieve an expansion of their national product, then it will also be time for vigorous democratic and labor organizations to fight for a share in decision-making and its results...

...Conflicts of this sort can be resolved by appropriate accommodations within the prevailing system, and 1 shall adopt for this type of conflicts the name Mao Tsetung has given them—nonantagonistic or within-system conflict...

...A dictatorship may surpass conflicts for some time, but will experience undesirable reactions (black markets forcing the state to become more tyrannical...

...I leave out "capitalism without capitalists"---such national enterprises as Amtrak...

...On the contrary, it is an open development of the economy based on an equally open movement for the betterment of living conditions...

...A complicating factor is that members of the elite groups may be employed by the government, the academy, private industry, and that, as C. Wright Mills has claimed, these elites tend to merge into what Eisenhower has called the industrial-military (and I would add: -academic) complex...

...It must be fragmented to reflect the plurality of interests and functions in a modern society—differences of class, region, race, philosophy, profession...

...the selfgovernment spoken of is not the government of each by himself but of each by all the rest...

...Instead of seeing the need for dictatorship as a misfortune, Bolshevik propaganda had to insist that it was a virtue...

...As an association of people, the socialist society certainly must reflect the democratic structure and behavior of its origin—the socialist movement...

...The great prerevolutionary historian Vasili Klyuchevsky thought that in Russia the state had always been ahead of society in promoting development...

...And this problem is compounded by the need to adjudicate the conflicts that are likely to arise among industries, regions, control agencies, and between workers and management, planners and consumers, surplus producers and subsidized areas, etc...

...he allowed supporters whom he could not contain to carry the revolution into the countryside before he could obtain its consent, thus uniting his enemies...

...in practice the technocentric structure is as much an ally of the labor movement as an impediment to stronger dynamism...

...But the purpose of these controls should be different...

...This, he explained, was half the battle...

...In a milder form, the argument for dictatorship points to the huge and powerful bureaucracy that is needed to cope with all the tasks of a socialist economy...

...Likewise in the Russian revolution, the seizure of power by a Marxist party was not tantamount to a proletarian revolution...

...Socialism is not a technocratic scheme designed to run the capitalist economy more efficiently...

...Codetermination: the system remains capitalist or state capitalist, but workers' representatives are elected to sit on the board of directors...

...Competitive and unnecessary expansion and a run-away rate of growth are illusionary benefits...

...This historical accident had grave ideological consequences...

...Although the various strata of the ruling class interchange functions and recruitment, they also are rivals...

...for all alternative systems are worse...

...fragmentation of power will serve the interests of democracy...

...the politicians: the party or military junta, the parliamentary parties...

...By contrast, it might develop industries that are not profitable today but would provide intangible benefits to the community...

...Reformist action by labor parties and governments has reached limits where further major progress can be made only by measures that seem to "go beyond the welfare state," notably: overall planning of social welfare, distribution of a national dividend, preponderance of public enterprises whose rationale is not profitability...

...it is also more practical...

...Readers interested in political theory may have noticed that in the passage I cited Marx and Engels fell into the language of Rousseau, although on other occasions they were highly critical of theories that attribute the founding of the state to a "contract...

...I find this model not only more persuasive than the myth of the technostructure...

...A socialist government can use similar mechanisms for different purposes: not to maintain high prices but to regulate production in accordance with needs...

...But let us not forget that part of the clumsiness of bureaucratic procedures is due to the safeguards against abuse...

...The Weimar Constitution foresaw a National Economic Chamber, which however never acquired real power...

...Or else they may have to pay for freedom by readmitting alien capitalism (which may be good for development but is not tolerated gladly in the present climate of opinion...

...Dictatorship and Progress WHERE UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES have not produced an enterprising middle class, the task of modernization depends on the new elites: army officers, urban intellectuals, civil servants, and classless students trained abroad...

...Each citizen should have the free choice of occupation after he has delivered the minimum service that all are required to supply...

...While recognition of such mistakes will in no way excuse the counterrevolutionary, fascist repression that followed, it must be asked whether the bloody coup would have been possible if the Chilean socialists had refrained from "revolutionary" gestures...

...This public service could be limited to, say, two years but it should be obligatory for all able-bodied citizens...

...It must be assumed that Marx and Engels worded this ending with special care, and it is therefore noteworthy that they said "association" instead of "state," and that they did not consider the development of the whole a condition for the development of each, but on the contrary "the development of each the condition .tor the development of all...

...it not only strikes all theories of spontaneity and participation with paralysis...

...For under democracy I could fight for more equality, while despotism would inevitably bring back inequality...

...he carries aggression abroad and oppression at home...

...It seeks equality in three areas: 295 —equality of opportunity for the selffulfillment of all...

...The aim of socialism, of course, is to make further frictions as tolerable as possible, to achieve a consensus that is not imposed from above but agreed to by the interested parties...

...A real workers' representation requires an independent national union...

...A gracious or guilt-ridden majority might grant certain dissenters conscientious objector status...

...The alternative to this Jacobin-Bolshevist scenario was spelled out by Karl Kautsky in his 1902 pamphlet The Social Revolution...

...The Inca state and Egypt of the Pharaohs featured both public ownership and a plan, but paired with servitude and exploitation...

...I see the following possibilities: • control is largely in the hands of corporate managers who are in close contact with the regulatory bureaucracy...

...A better way would be to let conflicts come out into the open and to stress the associative features of the socialistdemocratic processes: by developing cooperation and codetermination, letting the governed participate in decision-making, allowing a proliferation of committees and representative bodies...

...Political and Social Revolutions REVOLUTION is usually thought of as a single political act accomplished in a relatively short time, sharply separating two different systems or epochs...

...Obviously, abundance is always relative, and no utopia can elude unforeseen problems...

...There might be a choice of the age at which one fulfills this obligation, and also a choice between kinds of service...

...In Yugoslavia these have neither political nor economic power...

...Rather than call upon the whole of society against "big brother," democrats could suggest two remedies against his domination: encouraging mobility within each column and rivalry between the columns...

...it gives them little access to the formulation of policy on the national level...

...No wonder bureaucracy has a bad press in capitalist countries...

...The latter presupposes strong independent mass organizations and established traditions of constitutional government...

...He may measure his performance—in a certain way similar to the old guild craftsman or the artist—by aesthetic criteria, sanitary standards, satisfaction of the workers with their work, environmental impact of his operations, but not necessarily by the quantity of output and the efficiency of his use of the equipment...

...I can here only give a brief run-down, and refer to other articles for details...

...Since basic needs are guaranteed to all, it will be the choice of each individual whether he or she wishes to work longer, acquire special skills, develop new lines of personal fulfillment...

...Quite a different problem arises when socialists obtain a majority and come into a position to impose their own system, i.e., create irreversible changes that might infringe on the rights of minorities...

...Freedom is not a luxury, to be enjoyed only by the members of a ruling elite, but a basic human aspiration that was brought to flower only in the unique development of Western civilization, and it is still waiting for full and generalized realization: Civil rights and human rights are still expanding, and their wider scope is on the agenda of socialism...

...Generals whose advice was professional had to go...

...L'esprit de systeme prevents the cool analysis of each action on its merits...

...It seems to them that under socialism people will undergo a fundamental change of 299 character...

...They could be that only if they were to develop their own political organ that would feed information to independent parties and trade unions...

...How well this device will work obviously depends on the vigor and number of independent articulate forces in the society...

...In the light of experience it can be said that the extent and speed of the early nationalizations in Soviet Russia and those in Eastern Europe after World War II were politically motivated and economically unwise, and that some reprivatization has paid off in Eastern Europe without endangering the regimes...

...These are ideal types, and one must be careful not to compare the vices of one group with the virtues of the other...

...To meet them the working class would need state power, but that would be only one episode in a long-drawn-out process...

...There is no substitute, no gimmick, organization, or scheme of participation that can or should take the place of political parties...

...Yet, as democracy increasingly becomes majority rule, it will tend to pervade more and more areas of public life...

...Their very mulishness will prevent reactionary forces from reversing the trend, and socialists depend very much on the self-preserving instincts of bureaucracy to protect social progress from political attacks...

...The neo-Malthusian Club of Rome builds its utopia on the premise of scarcity, or even impending famine...

...Democracy: A Prerequisite of Socialism WIDEST PARTICIPATION of the governed in the processes of decision-making is desirable not only on all levels of economic activity but also in schools, municipal affairs, all organizations of public interest...

...Originally, Lenin and Trotsky also thought of the Soviet dictatorship as an organ of popular democracy...

...The antisocialists among them then will push the analogy further: just as the popular revolution of 1789 ended by bringing that capitalist class to power, so the socialist revolution of our time will end, or has ended in some countries where it was tried, by bringing the technocrats and bureaucrats to power...

...The complex apparatus of a modern industrialized economy cannot be ruled by administrative fiat, and the courts are unable to resolve conflicts that arise out of social change...

...What matters is that big investment decisions and overall industry targets are controlled by public boards...

...Socialism: The Highest Stage of Individualism Socialism strives to abolish exploitation and inequality...

...The need to dramatize, to symbolize and periodicize is satisfied when a new age is proclaimed, and the proclamation helps people feel that indeed they owe allegiance to the new age...

...For this purpose, a number of devices and designs rival for attention...

...Thus, the dismantling of the soviets after Kronstadt and the NEP...

...The East European examples, which seem to contradict the possibility of democratic socialism, should not deter us...

...This is no reason to acclaim every dictatorship as progressive or to accept its claim of being "socialist...

...it reassures the revolutionary government that it can be dislodged only by counterrevolution...

...Some friends of the Third World have argued that underdeveloped countries cannot hope to make adequate progress while remaining democratic...

...This will not be achieved without their own participation and without pressures, even fighting...

...This was the ideology of Indira Gandhi...

...It must also be admitted that the democratic system of economic selfadministration that exists in Yugoslavia has not diminished the dictatorship of the party...

...Spartan communism subjected all citizens to equal political oppression...

...Whether they do this in the form of a council movement, in the form of trade unions or cooperatives, or in parliamentary forms, success will always depend on the amount of interest and action they put into the organ of self-administration...

...Real professional and industry representation requires national chambers of the various professions, farm associations, etc...

...Others have abolished the market for political reasons without, however, freeing the production units from the tyranny of profit calculations that continue to keep the workers under the yoke of exploitation...

...control is exercised through democratic movements directly at every level of production and distribution...

...20th-century economy, by whatever name, is characterized by its thorough politicization, 298 and under democratic socialism economic decisions would be political, too...

...Once again, it becomes clear how merely "formal" requirements can be translated into substantive measures...

...To introduce a socialist economy means to create institutions that would be difficult to repeal...

...It may broaden consumption but provide no incentives to produce bigger cars and more sophisticated household equipment...

...Moreover, it was to be the dictatorship not of a party but of the organs of socialist democracy opposed to the old state apparatus...

...Bureaucracy as a Tool of Socialism SOCIALISM HAS two uses for bureaucracy...

...but there are as many bureaucrats working in business as in government, and for all the talk of oppressive, immovable bureaucracy, the loudest complaints are heard when a dynamic bureaucracy tries to move an inflexible business corporation...

...The democratic process has resulted in permanent improvements and institutions, confirmed (and often expanded) even by right-wing governments that had originally opposed them...

...IF a revolution is to legitimate a socialist government, it must respond to the deeply felt desire of the population...

...Advocates of affirmative action have hammered this lesson home, and there is no reason to believe that a socialist community may not discover problems requiring similarly discriminatory laws, be it that the majority becomes persuaded of a need for remedial action or that minorities form log-rolling coalitions...

...In each of the "columns" we find politicians who articulate the technical plans that come from their respective bureaucracies...

...its production is for use, not for the creation of value...

...the question is, what would be the consequences of these errors...

...Stalin's crimes and the pact with Hitler, the imperialist policies since World War 11—all this is seen, not as so many steps away from socialism but as means to fortify its power in the U.S.S.R...

...Unfortunately, Marx called this requirement "labor service," and Hitler gave the same name to his premilitary training corps...

...The 1978 threat of a Socialist-Communist government in France paralyzed the capital market, and graver consequences might have ensued in case of that coalition's victory...

...we can direct investment in new technology so as to meet the true requirements...

...it will develop a policy on education, family life, and health protection, on workers' rights and, above all, on overall economic policies...

...Underdeveloped countries will rely largely on a central plan to develop their industries, but it should be kept in mind that in so doing, they also depend on the population's ability to produce needed articles in their family, or to do without them...

...Marx coined the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat," but he always meant it in a sociological sense, and he envisaged it for only a brief period...

...The most serious enemy of selfgovernment, however, is apathy and in307 difference...

...it was to substitute a direct, human relationship of cooperation for the mediated, material relationship of property and profitability...

...Capitalistic variations of the codetermination scheme, for instance the VW-model where workers own shares in small denominations, or the Sears Roebuck plan, where the employees' pension fund owns the shares...

...A socialist economy must be so designed that its functioning depends not on the vigilance of a government department but on self-adjusting mechanisms, steady feedback, and corrective action...

...A planned economy may postpone the use of an invention that might be marginally useful but would require excessive resources and unwarranted social costs...

...Imbued with the democratic spirit of that revolution, they saw "the association" as the means to mediate between the demands of society and the rights of the individual...

...Foreseeing fascism, he warned that reactionary gangs would try to turn the clock back by force...

...Not all conflict may be susceptible to litigation...

...In a socialist society nobody should be called a parasite because he chooses to write poetry rather than advertising copy...

...Bureaucracy is a check upon it, and the more so the less it is itself a monolith...

...A socialist economy is not subject to the whiplash of competition to expand production for the sake of profit, and it does not have to make work for the unemployed...

...This is why socialists of the last century embraced democracy so fervently...

...no idea, be it ever so pure and convincing, can be a substitute for the democratic expression of consent that makes it unnecessary for the revolution to suppress dissenters...

...The border between work and play should become blurred...

...This dream has been expressed in the socialist literature of all times...

...Democracy is movement of people, constant struggle to enlarge their rights and to bring more of them into the peer group...

...I should like to refer here to two earlier essays I wrote for Dissent: "The Right to be Lazy" and "Three Economic Models," now in the books Voices of Dissent and The Radical Papers...

...But under the pressure of circumstances—the unique opportunity of the physical disappearance of the ruling class and the total collapse of the economy—the political revolution ran far ahead of the possibilities for a socialist revolution in Russia...

...Political outlets must be available for those who, rightly or wrongly, do not feel that their aspirations can be fulfilled within the existing institutions...

...she was brought down by antimodernizing forces...

...After all, this happened in a country that had enjoyed democratic government for 40 years and had the experience of the antisocialist coup of 1932...

...It will distribute as much as possible of the national dividend and will allow improvements and innovations only where they benefit the consumers or save labor and resources...

...It is equipped to deal with social change, and the structure of the socialist economy is so designed that it will absorb unforeseen irregularities...

...It can be realized only if the governed have access to all levels of government...

...In addition, bureaucracy may develop programs and points of view that grow out of its assigned routine but point toward new possibilities—projects that may lead beyond the welfare purposes, or even critical views of existing policies and institutions...

...In the long run, the health of the socialist system will depend on the amount of "self-activation" or "self-movement"—words Marx and Luxemburg repeated again and again...

...As Rosa Luxemburg was fond of saying, "The wisdom of the wisest Central Committee cannot be a substitute for the experience people gain by making their own mistakes...

...though he 301 remains a martyr, he need not be a model...

...Most parties also claim that what they represent is not really a particular interest but "the best interests of all" or everybody's interest "if rightly understood...

...But for our purposes, it is preferable to divide the new class into two large groups: --the political avant-garde, the movers in government and business...

...where even Paul Goodman, our most ardent advocate of local self-government, called on the central New York school board to assert its authority...

...The new possibilities of the welfare state have brought to the fore problems that previously had been hidden by the need of fighting first for material satisfactions...

...they must develop it by their own efforts and ingenuity...

...To state the argument in this form is almost tantamount to destroying it...

...Technological shifts, population movements, even fashion changes can produce problems very similar to those that occur in capitalist economies...

...I could, for instance, be persuaded to give Catholics a tax remission for services, such as school and abortion, which they do not require...

...Whereas the first is flexible and dynamic, and derives its legitimation from the claim that it represents the people, the second has the "civil service mentality" of honesty, obedience, predictability, and sluggishness...

...we can reduce the enormous waste of resources that occurs under capitalism...

...a socialist economy can write off the losses and shift production...

...as is well known, their revolutions were side-tracked and ended in capitalism—with individualism frozen in the property relationship and opportunity confined to the class of owners...

...But Stalin was not merely the "top bureaucrat," and the Communist bureaucrats are not an exploitative class in the same sense as were capitalists and feudal lords...

...But socialism begins with the insight that the whole is more than the sum of its parts...

...The latter determine only feasibility, maybe desirability...

...Strongly centralized, overarching organs of decision-making will favor state capitalism...

...More important, their job may lead them to look beyond the present system and to project policies requiring a more rational economy...

...Bismarck nationalized the railroads and the health service...

...At this point I should like to emphasize that the only other alternative is some form of corporate, bureaucratic or state capitalism...

...The syndicalist system: shops are run cooperatively by the trade unions and are free to compete, though investment decisions may be made centrally...

...Socialists hope to emancipate people from serving goals that have been imposed on them either by arbitrary masters or by abstract laws of economic development...

...that it can take emergency measures to paralyze its enemies...

...together they not only impose elements of a distributive economy on an acquisitive system...

...But it cannot claim, realistically, that it will do away with drudgery, will not demand exertions and sacrifices, and will be able to satisfy all demands...

...Castro has done much that is admirable in Cuba...

...a society, finally, where man is no longer utilized as a means for purposes alien to him...

...In practice, however, socialism has usually come to be identified with "collectivism," and two of its best-known features are public ownership of the means of production and a comprehensive "plan" of production and distribution...

...No government or party can place self-administration on a platter and hand it to the people by decree...

...It is a movement of people, and its idea cannot be divorced from their eternal yearning for freedom...

...It certainly is not a movement of technocrats for a more efficient organization of society...

...I find it strange that socialist philosophers should expect a total psychological change and then not trust the "new man" to take part in decision-making...

...Historical parallels are also relevant here: despotic governments helped the development of capitalism...

...Fear of 1984, of The Bureaucratization of the World, of the "technocentric society" is based on the perception that these technocrats, who see the need for a centrally directed economy, may also want to use their strategic position—society's need of their skills in commanding functions—to seize power and make themselves the dominant class...

...I shall deal with them later...

...This system was called mercantilism, and its greatest contemporary representative is the Shah of Iran...

...The Russian revolution led to the nationalization of most enterprises, and this model has been followed throughout Eastern Europe...

...Not only that, they must continue to develop them even after they have been institutionalized...

...This revolution will be supported by a large part of the technical intelligentsia, which sees both the material possibilities and its own ambitions curbed by the dictatorship...

...For every human institution can become obsolete, rigid, perverted, alienated from its original intentions...

...where production is geared to the human needs of all and the product is distributed equitably...

...Such a multiplication of participatory bodies may have its negative and even unpleasant or dangerous aspects...

...Because of this accident of history, the socialist revolution has come to be identified with such a seizure of political power...

...I reluctantly conclude that the councils are more likely to become the instruments of a strong political leadership, transmission belts between the national government and the shop, rather than true organs of democratic control...

...The purely "formal" or procedural features of the democratic process are converted into substantive measures, and democratic government comes to be defined (by Aristotle, who hated it for that very reason) as a government that serves the interest of the majority...

...after the Kapp Putsch in Germany nearly overthrew the Republic, the Austrian Socialists adopted a program envisaging a defensive dictatorship against reactionary plotters...

...that it can swiftly create new offices and institutions to supersede the old...

...We call it the "bourgeois revolution" because of its outcome, but "the third estate" was much larger than the bourgeoisie, and even at the height of the terror the masses were not in power...

...None of these classes has economic power of its own, but they all hope to use state power as the vehicle of their aspirations: to develop the country's resources and to prepare it for the race with other countries...

...These models, which have given a bad name to socialism, are not the poorly managed samples of a basically sound structure, but are monstrosities in their very conception...

...What is dictatorial and tyrannical is the General Will...

...Today we may amplify these insights by our better knowledge of the process of revolution...

...This means free discussion, free expression, free access to the means of criticism and to the media, the right to question yesterday's truth and correct yesterday's mistakes, the freedom to assemble, organize, and petition, the right to choose representatives and to form parties—even the right to refuse cooperation (to strike...

...What prevents the adoption of these measures is not political oppression but their inherent risk, the absence of organizations that have a clear and popular plan and are ready to fight for it...

...that it may stay in power for more than one election period...

...It seems to me more fruitful to deal with historical questions as history: in some countries, we have seen, the social revolution was accelerated by a political revolution that also established a certain type of state, the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party...

...The computer does not produce solutions for problems that have not been fed into it...

...Relative abundance" means that we now have the technical means to control the factors that used to produce relative scarcity: we can control the growth of population...

...Misinvestments in a capitalist economy lead to depression...

...Far from subduing the individual, socialism is the highest stage of individualism—its fruition for all...

...its redeeming feature is that the defects are clearly seen and openly discussed...

...Stalin called upon the "people" to help purge the bureaucrats and especially those who had developed some appreciation of the limitations of their power or maybe even a certain affection for the people under their jurisdiction...

...Then a grave decision will have to be approached: a new economic constitution must be codified, and it will tend either toward state capitalism and eventually fascism, or toward democratic socialism...

...Even in the Great French Revolution the political events did not reflect the deep social upheaval that shook French society...

...For all these reasons it is necessary to make the following distinctions: • As long as socialists are a minority or only a weak majority they can press for reforms, may join governments committed to reforms, but are not in a position to introduce fundamental changes in the social-economic system...

...it is a contributing factor to decentralization, but it should not be used as a pretext for withholding the essential political and ideological freedom...

...Dutch sociologists have invented the term verzoiling (roughly: column-building) for the process of splitting society into professional camps: the corporate structure, the administrative structure, the military structure, the medical structure, the academic structure, the judiciary, the political structure, each with its top layer of a dominating elite...

...Some modern states have adopted a rapid industrialization plan which—though praiseworthy in its intention—ruthlessly subordinates the desires of the citizens to the needs of the state...

...These bureaucracies tend to stabilize and perpetuate the new social relations...

...Even those who would see a period of transition might be surprised to learn that as late as in 1921 Lenin wrote: "We have elements of a capitalist economy, of state capitalism, of socialism, and of a cooperative economy in our country...

...it can localize mistakes and smooth out fluctuations...

...From Plato to Hegel and his latter-day disciples, political theorists have maintained that the state should represent not the interest of the majority but that of the whole, or "the general will...

...The government, a fortiori, would be possessed of infinite good will and wisdom, and therefore the people would have no need for democratic organs of control...

...In the nonrevolutionary advances of Western socialism, by contrast, each wave of social legislation leaves, like a sediment, a bureaucracy that implements and institutionalizes it...

...The danger that the administrative and technical bureaucracy will set itself up as the new masters is comparatively small—to do that the bureaucrats would need the leadership of a political elite...

...The large figures of "participation" that are often cited for Yugoslavia thus reflect only a rather truncated democracy...

...Self-Government and Participation SELF GOVERNMENT means actual participation of the governed in the process of decisionmaking and in the design of measures to carry 306 out those decisions...

...At some point the government may have to choose between increasing the incentives, lowering the minimum sustenance, and increasing the years of required service...

...but it is assumed that some rewards of excellence will be sought in the shape of nonmaterial satisfactions, such as honors and responsible functions, and that material rewards will be held to a token level or taxed so that private accumulation of wealth is confined to tolerable limits...

...It will take into account environmental and social costs...

...But if I did have to choose, I would accept inequality under a democratic government rather than a despotic government offering equality...

...The dictatorship now was passed off as the model for all other revolutions, the vision of the social revolution became confused with the myth of the seizure of power...

...Conscription of labor can be held to a minimum if a system of incentives is available to those who engage in a career...

...The divergent groups and antagonisms can act upon the system...

...They were confident that a majority of the people would act as a government for the people, breaking down the formal separation of the state from the social life of the country...

...It is a mistake, of course, to reject those institutions because they give access to the levers of power all too impartially to the rich and to the poor...

...To appreciate this we have to examine more closely what is meant by revolution...

...they merely called "plan" the speedy development of certain key industries while they failed to provide satisfaction to their consumers...

...Fortunately, we don't have to choose between welfare and freedom, democracy and socialism...

...The association can envisage goals that unassociated individuals might not even be able to conceive...

...The Distributive Economy: A Political Economy THE SOCIALIST ECONOMY is designed to meet human needs...

...In the West, moreover, the close association of academic, corporate, and government research keeps the society "open," and agencies of the establishment (e.g., the CIA in the Vietnam war) sometimes oppose adventurous policies that the government and the public have embraced...

...This is an opportunity as well as a danger...

...Lenin had foreseen only a bourgeois-democratic revolution under the "hegemony" of workers and peasants...

...Usually one hears this argument from the enemies of socialism, and socialists tend to minimize its seriousness...

...the bureaucracy proper, the civil service and corporate managers...

...The problem has been put most succinctly by John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty: The "people" who exercise the power are not the same people over whom it is exercised...

...socialism today does not confront the capitalist model with a utopian model...

...The continued presence of opposition parties, of alternatives and of constitutional guarantees will assure that, no matter under which social-economic system, the further evolution toward greater freedom will not be permanently abridged...

...It does not produce a political will, but is the organ of a will...

...To impose majority will in order to introduce sweeping measures of socialization, therefore, places considerable responsibility on that majority...

...To create equal opportunity for all indeed means to write laws that affect different groups differently...

...where economic resources are controlled by public agencies, themselves under public scrutiny...

...At a certain level of technological development, the minimum that is guaranteed to all citizens can be large enough to reduce inequality to marginal amounts (to name an arbitrary proportion—the permissible maximum income could be twice as large as the median and four times as large as the minimum...

...Some writers influenced by the Frankfurt School have given it an even sharper, I mean to say more ludicrous, form...

...I think it is now time for socialists to speak frankly about Allende's mistakes...

...Anchored in its various "columns" it cannot become an autonomous machinery of oppression...

...Obviously, I do not claim that a socialist economy will not make mistakes...

...It may spend more on safety measures and health protection, or on machines that do not save labor but reduce drudgery and discomfort...

...This does not exclude differences of talent, achievement, and ambition...

...Liberal capitalism was characterized by the total separation of the state from the economy...

...Trotsky later wondered "whether we did not introduce Thermidor ourselves...

...As long as only bureaucrats rule, they will be "corrupt," i.e., responsive to the parameters of their jobs...

...it is porous to the influences that come from the community, and it is allied with socialism by unbreakable ties...

...Sweden's "Meidner Plan," under which control of each company would gradually pass into the employees' hands...

...It is a movement, more and more, of all the people and not only the laboring classes...

...In Eastern Europe, planning has usually meant the development of heavy industry, at great 297 cost to workers' well-being, and utter chaos in regard to consumer satisfaction...

...It goes without saying that we, by contrast, have in mind those unpopular but necessary jobs that cannot be filled by special incentives in an economy of abundance (say, street cleaning, digging ditches, mining), and which could not be made a required stage in career training (as working as nurse's aid could be for medical students...

...It still is hated for the same reasons: it will impose minimum wages and maximum hours, health protection and medical insurance, social security, the dole, death taxes, regulations of business, environmental protection, codetermination and grievance procedures, as well as civil rights and integration...

...Modern socialist theory has found that a certain freedom of the consumer markets and the price mechanism is an aid to flexible responses while an authoritatively imposed plan may lead to gross disregard of consumer needs...

...The other type of conflict, obviously, is of a nature that cannot be 300 resolved within the system...

...This system was used in the Spanish Civil War and in parts of Israel...

...Usually, business claims the dynamism for itself and blames dullness on "the bureaucrats...

...In the age of welfare reforms, government agencies are set up to control the anarchy of the markets, shield the environment and protect people from exploitation, and curb the rapacity of business...

...civil-rights claimants, farmers, and church groups fight for influence...

...The fatigue of drawn-out committee meetings or disgust with factionalism all too easily leave the field to a determined group, which takes over and makes a mockery out of the best schemes...

...Likewise, 1789 is seen as a watershed, even though Tocqueville showed how much of the ancien regime survived and how much of the new age it had anticipated...

...partial public planning has always been a necessary complement to "free" enterprise, which will not provide services deemed essential by the community...

...The price Western workers have paid for their greater freedom is the see-saw battle of class war, the pressure to succeed, the lack of security...

...For both purposes, they offer elite leadership, for progress can no longer be left to the spontaneous processes of undirected growth...

...We also have seen that hostile powers are able to create conditions similar to civil war, which eventually seem to justify intervention by the armed forces against a lawfully elected government (Spain 1936, Chile 1973...

...The techniques of guiding the markets have been worked out by the corporate economy and the relevant government departments, regulatory agencies, and international authorities (European Coal and Steel Community, Common Market Farm program, etc...

...economic deformities creating pressures in other areas, etc...

...but he is dependent on Soviet aid, had to allow massive emigration, keeps up to 30,000 dissidents in prisonlike institutions, has not dared to face an election and has been unable to create a socialist political structure...

...The Great Wall of China was not built because labor became available but because the tyrannical will of Shih Huang-ti made it available...

...In the underdeveloped countries popular revolutions are less likely to succeed...

...Socialism continues the movement of emancipation that was started in the 18th century, and it wants to spread individualism to all, removing the fetters that capitalism has clasped on the fulfillment of many human aspirations...

...This analysis disagrees with the theories of Saint-Simon, Bell, Djilas, Orwell, Burnham, Wittfogel, Brzezinski and Birnbaum who all assume that somehow a managerial bureaucracy, a "technocentric structure" or "new class" emerges from the pores of our society—as the capitalist class developed in the interstices of the ancien regime...

...Allende came to power without a clear mandate, either in numbers or by force of his program...

...they are based on the experience of countries that never or rarely had enjoyed democratic institutions and citizens' rights...

...Second, bureaucracy may accomplish what private enterprise fails to provide or may provide it better (how wonderful are European railroads...

...The term "totalitarian" suggests the monolithic identity of the various elites and conceals the fact that oppression is first of all political...

...control is exercised by democratic institutions through a bureaucracy (an unstable setup that may easily be transformed into either of the preceding types...