Popular planning
We recently had the honor of hosting Robin Hahnel, who spoke at the CIM as well as to my students. Hahnel spoke, quite fittingly given the context, on the need for a new model of participatory socialist planning, to replace market socialist models on the one hand and authoritarian planning on the other.
The presentation and debate were excellent, with some of my students rightly expressing the concern that the early stages of the revolution require some moments of authoritarianism in the form of guidance and a degree of centralism. Hahnel agreed, but I think his point was that there is a danger in beginning from the assumption that centralism is needed, and that this danger is of the reification of this assumption, its transformation into an a priori rule.
To illustrate: one of my students approached me after the lecture and we were chatting. I should point out that he is more ideologically worrying than most of the group (which, as a whole, is bloody excellent), and is often checking the stock market or trying to buy Reeboks on the Internet.
My student mentioned that he agreed with those who argued the need for a modicum of authoritarianism, but his manner of argument was peculiar. He referred, specifically, to the recent changes at the Plaza Venezuela metro station, the city’s busiest transfer point. Recently, in response to the chaotic process of boarding the trains (which consisted essentialy of pushing against the crowd as hard as you could), metro officials painted lines on the floor with arrows indicating where one ought to line up to prepare to board the train.
My student’s claim: if there were no metro officials there telling people what to do, they wouldn’t have changed their behavior. In contrast, I can offer my own experience at Plaza Venezuela: when the lines were painted, I wondered out loud on several occasions how it was possible that the officials thought the idea would work. But then I began to notice that, when one person clearly failed to understand the system or ignored it and passed to the front of the line, others would (extremely) patiently explain to the passenger how the new system works. Very rarely did I see an official offering such explanations, and within a few weeks nearly everyone is following the lines…..
I think there should be a federation of all consumer councils in the city of Caracas. This federation would be mostly concerned with what kinds of public goods the consumers — really just the citizens or residents, if you will — of Caracas want to have, and how they want them to work. But I certainly think this federation should have an R&D team of experts at its disposal. That is, this R&D team of “experts” on various subjects having to do with all city-wide public goods, including transportation, “works” for the federation. The projects they work on could be projects suggested by elected delegates on the steering committee for the city federation of consumer councils. Or, the projects could be suggested directly by a neighborhood council, or ward council in the city-wide federation. (All this is part of the proposal/model called “a participatory economy” Michael Albert and I have written about.)
So… if users in Caracas of the public good we call rapid transit are frustrated about how queing does, or does not work, they can order THEIR R&D team to come up with some propoals about how the problem might be better solved. Longer-run solutions probably would run along the lines of building more public transit lines, running more trains on existing lines, extending the hours of operation of the transit system. Since all these solutions entail additional social costs, the city-wide consumer federation would have to consider if they wanted to raise the portion of their overall consumption they take in the form of public goods instead of private, or individual goods, to carry one of the out. Or, the city-wide federation of consumer councils could propose to the city-wide federation of worker councils that they stagger their starting and quitting times more appropriately. This might be done with little, or no increase in social costs. In any case, the R&D team could flesh these ideas out for the members of the city federation of consumer councils to consider, and then vote on. The city federation of consumers could also ask their R&D team to propose shorter-run solutions — like painting lines, or using poles and ribbons in particular ways to avoid pushing and hasten entry and exit into trains — as was apparently done.
I agree there are issues that involve expertise, and therefore there is a need for experts. And many aspects of transportation in a city like Caracas need to be coordinated as a whole — centrally if one likes that term. But that doesn’t mean that a group of experts working for a “central” transportation agency for the city must be the ones who themselves (1) decide what problems to work on, on what problems not to work on, (2) formulate solutions for problems they prioritize, and (3) impliment their ideas about what to do. In my conception the consumers of transportation services should be mainly responsible for identification of problems, prioritizing problems, and choosing solutions — directing transportation experts who work for them to help them think through various options. The difference in my conception and the usual conception is that in my conception the experts work under the direction of the consumers and the consumers ultilmately vote and decide to approve of some proposal for ameliorating queing problems.
A subway system is certainly a part of a city-wide transportation system that must be coordinated as a whole — or centrally. But that doesn’t mean that the city transportation department staffed by experts answering only to a mayor — even if democratically elected — should be the ones making decisions about how to run it.
Comment by Robin Hahnel — November 6, 2006 @ 2:55 pm