CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, AND POLITICAL EQUALITY

...If private ownership of productive resources by a restricted class is in fact a sufficient condition of hierarchical control, then this is all that is necessary to conclude that private ownership in this sense is not as compatible as (some forms of) public or social ownership with democratic control...

...I shall therefore attempt here to further advance the valuable dialogue ("What is Political Equality...

...Because one "cannot...

...He explicitly identifies hierarchical control in the internal governance of the corporation as the second major counterdemocratic consequence of modern capitalism...

...Dahl begins by challenging the theoretical confusion according to which ownership of an enterprise is simply equivalent to control of that enterprise—that is, private ownership is equivalent to control by private owners...

...and that these forms, by insuring the pluralistic dispersion of economic and political power, could avoid the classic pitfalls of bureaucratic state socialism...

...initiated by Philip Green and continued by Robert A. Dahl in the Summer 1979 issue of Dissent...

...If private ownership is a sufficient 455 condition of hierarchical or hegemonic control of the economic enterprise in some sense, then public or social ownership in some form is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for full democratic control of the economic enterprise, and arguably of the polity as well...

...Several recent essays by Robert A. Dahl on the ideal of "procedural democracy" in political and economic life have significantly advanced our understanding of this issue without, however, providing an altogether satisfactory resolution...

...One might fully concede this point, however, while at the same time maintaining that there exist alternative'forms of public or, perhaps more properly, social ownership (and decentralized self-management...

...It is unfair to criticize Robert Dahl, as does Philip Green, for having failed to move beyond a thin liberal commitment to purely abstract or formal civil and political equality...

...hegemony"), the distribution of socioeconomic resources (concentration vs...

...III THE IMPLICATIONS are obvious—and politically important...

...Rejecting the feasibility of regulatory reform, he now urges a program of egalitarian redistribution...

...They exemplify specifically a broader thesis: that democratic liberalism, in order to preserve the integrity of its own core values, must embrace socialist aspirations...

...More strongly, it may well be true, as classical liberals claim, that pure public ownership by a bureaucratic state necessarily tends to generate hierarchical or "hegemonic" control relationships—that, by consolidating both political and economic power in the hands of bureaucratic state officials, this specific form of public ownership would necessarily pose a severe and standing threat to procedural democracy in both polity and economy...

...And on this crucial point— socialism as a necessary condition for full procedural democracy in both economy and polity—Dahl should straighforwardly accept the implications of his own argument...

...I shall focus upon what I take to be a critical ambiguity in Dahl's recent discussions of the relationship between ownership and control of the modern productive enterprise...

...Against the classical liberal view, Dahl argues that a privately owned economy is not a necessary condition for a high degree of organizational or associational pluralism (which is in turn a necessary, though not sufficient, condition of polyarchy...

...What Is Political Equality," Dissent (Summer 1979), 363-68, 453 before the standing threat posed to political equality by gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth and income (such as those tolerated in, for example, the United States at present...

...On this point Dahl's argument goes awry...

...I will claim that Dahl's own commitment to full procedural democracy in economic and political life necessarily entails a more fully explicit commitment to socialist aspirations than he has yet been willing to embrace...

...Dahl's attention to the problem of effective political equality has led him to a sharpened focus upon the socioeconomic bases'of political life, and to concentration upon certain key problems in political economy...

...Thus there are no strictly necessary relationships between legal forms of ownership and the degree of socioeconomic concentration or dispersion...

...On Removing Certain Impediments to Democracy in the United States," Dissent (Summer 1978), 310-24...

...For, clearly, ownership "is definitely not a sufficient condition for control...

...The specific argument is meant, moreover, to exemplify a much broader thesis: that the liberaldemocratic commitment to full individual equality of Civil and political citizenship, when properly unpacked, requires a commitment not merely to formal equality of abstract right before the law but also to effective material equality of economic and social power—in our time, to democratic socialism...

...Dahl has maintained, in general, the position that there are no necessary connections between forms of ownership, on the one hand, and systems of control on the other...

...Hence the choice between alternative forms of ownership—say, between reformed capitalism and democratic socialism—is, or ought to be, a primarily technical one: a correct answer "depends as much upon technical as upon ideological or philosophical judgments, and perhaps a good deal more...

...economic hierarchy or hegemony within the enterprise—whether exercised directly by entrepreneurial owners themselves, as in competitive or liberal capitalism, or by nonowning managers (however "relatively autonomous" vis-a-vis private owners), as in corporate or late capitalism...

...48-61...

...Therefore both as a necessary condition for full political equality and as a desirable goal in its own right, "the criteria of procedural democracy ought to be applied to the government of firms...

...here he cites the example of hegemonic polities, such as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, with privately owned economies yet centrally dominated social orders...

...To this degree, therefore, the relationship between ownership and control is not purely contingent or "technical," as Dahl would have it, but partially necessary...

...Public or social ownership, likewise, is a sufficient condition neither for democratic control by the associated producers nor for hegemonic control by the bureaucratic state: publicly or socially owned enterprises range from hierarchical systems of managerial dominance, as in Soviet-style command economies, to the system of social self-management and workers' participation practiced in Yugoslavia...

...Moreover, and still more generally, the stated implications extend well beyond the confines of the immediate case at hand...

...be certain that a particular form of control requires a particular form of ownership," that is, because a specific form of ownership "may not be a necessary condition" for a specific control relationship, the question of control is "theoretically prior to"3—and, to the degree that these assertions hold, logically independent of—the question of ownership...

...He has become increasingly outspoken, indeed eloquent, about the degree to which entire categories of adult persons, such as women and slaves, have been systematically excluded from formal equality of civil and political citizenship by ostensibly democratic politics from Periclean Athens to Rousseau's Geneva, to Tocqueville's America and beyond...

...II DAHL'S RECENT WORK has emphasized the desirability, as a necessary feature of any inclusive polyarchy or "procedural democracy," of broader and deeper political equality...

...and public or social ownership (depending upon one's ideological or philosophical perspective) is equivalent either to democratic control by the "associated producers" or to hegemonic control by the bureaucratic state...

...Public or social ownership, that is, is not merely permitted but in fact required by Dahl's own ideal of full procedural democracy (a) within the economy...

...For surely it seems empirically plausible to maintain that private ownership in anything like its present form—that is, private ownership of productive resources by a restricted social class—is not compatible with full (as distinct from what Dahl labels "pseudo-") procedural democracy within the economic enterprise...

...This, however, is a far more contestable claim...

...but from this it does not follow, as Dahl's argument tacitly assumes, that private ownership is not a sufficient condition of any more general type of control relationship...

...Conversely, common sense suggests that public or social ownership is neither a necessary condition for a pluralistic (if not egalitarian) social order (witness any of the existing polyarchal democracies...

...The relationship between the two, Dahl argues, is in the end purely contingent...

...Thus far, however, these arguments have failed to extend with sufficient precision the radical implications of his own commitment to full procedural democracy in economic life...

...At a minimum, the burden of proof can here reasonably be placed upon Dahl to demonstrate that private ownership in the conventional sense is, or could in some reformed but recognizably similar condition become, compatible with full procedural democracy in economic life...

...2. Economic Democracy Dahl's discussion of forms of ownership, however, concerns not merely the degree of pluralism within society at large but also the degree of democracy within the economic enterprise as such...

...dispersion), and systems of economic ownership and control (capitalism vs...

...Pluralism Revisited," Comparative Politics (January 1978), pp...

...Here he sometimes seems to maintain a separate position that we might cast as Proposition 2: Neither private nor public ownership is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for full procedural democracy within the economic enterprise...

...This commitment has taken two basic forms, both at work in Dahl's recent contributions to Dissent (see again, Note 1...

...2 Private ownership is not a sufficient condition for control by private owners: privately owned corporations 2 "Pluralism Revisited," 194...

...Dahl begins by arguing persuasively that there are no necessary connections between legal forms of ownership, on the one hand, and the presence or absence of extensive social pluralism on the other...

...Thus neither private nor public ownership is a sufficient condition of control by private or public owners—so far, we may freely grant Dahl his case...

...191-203...

...For, again, it is surely not unreasonable to infer, on the basis of available evidence, that private ownership of productive resources by a restricted class is a sufficient condition of some form of 3 Ibid...

...He has increasingly directed his attention to the complex interrelationships between political forms ("polyarchy" vs...

...Even if it is granted, as it clearly should be, that "government ownership is as consistent as private ownership with despotic control of enterprises," it does not necessarily follow, as the converse must if Dahl is fully to establish his case, that private ownership is as consistent as public or social ownership with democratic control of enterprises...

...Private ownership is not a sufficient condition of one specific control relationship, namely, direct control by private owners themselves...

...At least since the publication ten years ago of After the Revolution?, he has been calling for the democratization of what he calls the "Corporate Leviathan...

...Again, as Dahl argues, some forms of "government" ownership are clearly every bit as consistent as private ownership with despotic control of the enterprise...

...he cites here Yugoslavia as the example of a publicly or socially owned, yet decentralized and competitive, economy...

...Let us formulate this view as Proposition 1: Neither private nor public ownership of the economy is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for extensive social pluralism...

...Barring evidence to the contrary, we may conclude that private ownership (in the specified sense) is not as compatible as public or social ownerwhip with democratic control of the enterprise—indeed, more strongly, that it is fundamentally incompatible with such control...

...To begin with, Dahl's analysis of the relationship between ownership and control has been complicated by the fact that it has appeared in the context of discussions of two separate and separable issues: (1) the degree of organizational or associational pluralism within a society...

...nor, even less plausibly, is it a sufficient condition for extensive social pluralism (witness any of the existing Soviet-style regimes...

...But from the noncontroversial claim that the question of control is partially independent of ("not fully determined by") the question of ownership, Dahl then seems to slide, albeit not without some equivocation, to the stronger and far more controversial claim that the question of control is entirely independent of the question of ownership...

...Second, Dahl has also emphasized the sense in which political equality is vitiated by deeper structures of hierarchical or "hegemonic" power and authority in economic and social life...

...1. Social Pluralism...

...socialism).' Robert Dahl has come to stress the importance, as a necessary condition of meaningful political equality, of a more equal distribution of socioeconomic resources...

...After the Revolution: Authority in a Good Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp...

...The pursuit of this rapprochement in both theory and practice ought to rank high upon the agenda of both liberal democrats, such as Dahl, and democratic socialists, such as Green...

...For Dahl has in recent years become increasingly preoccupied with the sense in which even the fullest formal equality of civil and political right, once extended to hitherto disenfranchised groups, has in practice often been undermined by deeper structures of economic and social inequality...

...First, Dahl emphasizes more explicitly than See Robert A. Dahl, Polyarrhy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), pp...

...Against this naive view, Dahl begins by asserting the unexceptionable proposition that "forms of control are not fully determined by forms of ownership...

...To say that private ownership is not as compatible as public or social ownership with democratic control of the enterprise is in itself, of course, to say nothing about the relative compatibility or incompatibility of alternative forms of public or social ownership with procedural democracy in economic and political life...

...2) the internal distribution of power and authority within the autonomous, here economic, subsystems of a pluralistic social order...

...Giant firms, he now emphasizes, are both "public enterprises," with societywide consequences, and "political systems" in their own right—they are "essentially public or social, not private...

...454 can be, and in late capitalism often are, controlled not by property-owning entrepreneurs but by nonowning managers...

...and (b), to the degree that formal equality of civil and political right can be activated only by effective equality of economic and social power, within the polity at large...

...Nor is private ownership a sufficient condition of extensive social pluralism...

...115-40...