RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 299 NAR #14 RPS Economic, Ecological, and International Vision
Ep 299 of RevolutionZ, the fourteenth in the Next American Revolution sequence has Andre Goldman, Reverend Stephen Du Bois, Bert Dillinger, and Lydia Luxembourg discuss RPS economic, ecological, and internationalist vision as well as internal and external criticisms of the emerging views and means of resolving such differences. They make a case for fundamental changes, discuss how the views of what to seek arose, how they were presented and received, and their importance for practical endeavors. The question hanging over it all is do their future lessons bear on our current realities?
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 299th consecutive episode and it's the 14th in our Next American Revolution sequence. Episodes in that sequence are remember chapters from an oral history and as well they include some comments from myself called for identification purposes. Comments from myself called for identification purposes, interjections as we go along. So in this episode titled RPS Vision 2, andre Goldman, reverend Stephen Du Bois, bert Dellinger and Lydia Luxemburg discuss with Miguel Guevara, the interviewer RPS Economic, ecological and International Vision. So to begin, miguel, the authors and assembler of the oral history, asks Andre Goldman Andre, what about RPS economic vision? Rps says economic activity must of course produce desired goods and services, whether toothbrushes, public transport, health care, dinners or dungarees. But RPS and remember that's the organization at the center of the next American revolution. But RPS felt economic activity should produce desirable self-management, which is people collectively determining their own lives. It should produce equity, which is people having a fair share of society's benefits and burdens. It should produce solidarity, which is people enjoying and providing mutual aid for one another. And it should produce diversity, which is people enjoying and respecting a multitude of social and cultural answers to how to celebrate, communicate and worship. So an economy doesn't just produce stuff, it produces changed people and social relations, asked Miguel. Exactly, miguel, and that was indeed the thinking A very succinct text might just say RPS economics proposes to carry out production, consumption and allocation in a classless, equitable manner. It seeks to deliver to each actor, self-managing, say. It seeks to produce not only desired goods and services, but also desirable solidarity and diversity. But you're right that the logic is it produces goods and services and change conditions, but also change people. And we wanted to do all that consistent with our values. So, asked Miguel, that's kind of a qualitative statement of the broad aims. That was what the second approach to vision wanted. But am I right that the third approach, rps approach, would then ask what can do that? Indeed, can anything do that? Yes, that was indeed how RPS members thought about it.
Speaker 1:And to accomplish the ideals, we of course knew, as did many before us, that workplaces could not be controlled by a tiny class of owners above the whole process. There was nothing new in recognizing that that would subvert the values, but it was true, and so it was part of our thinking. It meant, however, that we would of course need venues where people can determine their own actions in accord with other people doing likewise. We found such venues in workplace and also community councils of the sort we have often seen in historical risings in the past. The idea was not only that owners would be gone, but that each actor would, in accord with RPS values, have a say in decisions proportionate to the impact of the decided issue on them. We call that aim self-management. So it isn't that everyone decides everything, one person, one vote. Nor is it anything goes. Yes, miguel, exactly so. To use a workplace example, sometimes few workers would be the most affected constituency and decide their own actions, though in context of overarching decisions by the whole workplace council. Our team sets our workday, but we do so in light of the whole workplace schedule and the agreed work that needs to get done. Sometimes the whole workplace council would be directly involved and decide, for example, work hours for everyone. Sometimes decisions would be by majority vote, other times they would be by consensus or by two-thirds, or whatever the point would be for the decision procedure. The tally used to best approximate people having a say proportionate to the effect on them, and so various patterns were tried and tested in diverse workplaces created on the RPS model, miguel asks.
Speaker 1:But beyond having workplace self-management, rps economics wanted to also change work itself. This was also about getting to self-management. About the class issue, am I right? Yes, in the usual corporate pattern, about 20% of the workforce does overwhelmingly empowering tasks, while 80% does overwhelmingly disempowering tasks. What does that mean? Well, miguel, the former do work that conveys to them confidence, social and conceptual skills, knowledge of the workplace and its possibilities and effective decision-making habits via empowering tasks. The latter do work that diminishes confidence, reduces social and conceptual skills, reduces knowledge of the workplace and its possibilities, instills habits of obedience and exhausts them via disempowering tasks. Elaborate, please. That is pretty abstract.
Speaker 1:Okay, miguel, rps members, like everyone in society, had had extensive personal experience that some jobs have better conditions and more enjoyable and engaging work than others. This type differential could, however, be offset by income considerations. You earn more for enduring more onerous conditions. But we knew a second aspect of work that people regularly experienced how empowering your work was would be harder to deal with. Why harder? Because, miguel, of what you mentioned earlier about economics, it can change people in ways with nasty consequences. So when some people who work within a corporate arrangement become ready to govern, others become ready to be governed.
Speaker 1:The 20% who do overwhelmingly empowering tasks tend to set agendas, make proposals and dominate discussions. They are the managers, accountants, engineers, administrators, doctors, lawyers and others with empowering situations and a larger than socially justifiable level of income and a larger than socially justifiable level of income. The 80% who do overwhelmingly disempowering tasks carry out instructions and become bystanders regarding decisions. They do work that reduces their confidence, social skills and knowledge and exhausts them. They short order, cook, push stuff on and take stuff off assembly lines, deliver packages, dig trenches, collect garbage and clean up after others. Isn't this just the way it is, says Miguel. And what causes some to do one and some to do the other? No, rps said this was not something inevitable.
Speaker 1:The difference between the classes derives from people's position in the division of labor. It can be changed. Rps calls the empowered 20% the coordinator class and calls the disempowered 80% the working class. And RPS feels there can be no self-management or equity if this class division persists. There can be no self-management or equity if this class division persists. For that reason, rps focused not only on the ills of private ownership as a core aspect of what decides economic types, but also on this division of labor into empowering and disempowering jobs, because our concepts highlight role structures and ask their implications, and our values highlight impact on people's ability to participate.
Speaker 1:Rps members saw that eliminating the capitalist owner's relative monopoly on property was of course essential to having everyone participate comparably, rather than owners ruling all others. But we also saw that ending ownership would not alone significantly alter the coordinator-worker hierarchy. For a person or for a group of people to own and rule over huge centers of productive capacity gave them monopoly control of workplaces and resources, which precluded the outcome we sought, and we all knew that it wasn't a new insight. But RPS also felt we had to no longer have a coordinator class that monopolizes empowering work. Everyone should own equally, of course, which really meant no one should own means of production, but beyond that, everyone should in their work have comparably empowering circumstances. This type thinking emerged, I suspect, largely because its initial advocates felt that what was often called 20th century socialism had undergone ownership changes that eliminated capitalists but had not ended class rule. So they realized we had to also break the coordinator class's relative monopoly on empowering circumstances. Rather than segregate empowering tasks into a relatively few jobs that a relatively few people would hold, we had to spread empowering tasks through all jobs by establishing what RPS called balanced job complexes.
Speaker 1:I interject, andre's recounting is certainly congenial to me, but I thought about these matters forever. Would it be sufficient for those who have been subject to conditions and training and constant messages that this division of labor was unavoidable training and constant messages that this division of labor was unavoidable If you wanted the fruits of economic production, you have to acknowledge the obvious, that is, that this division of labor is necessary. No other way they can deliver the goods. I hope Miguel gets a bit further into this. Miguel asks the same benefits and Duane or Desiree being schooled to endure boredom and take orders, to do repetitive tasks that lack information and limit connections and confidence, to follow decisions made by others and to connect only to others who suffer similar exclusion.
Speaker 1:Rps says we all ought to do a mix of tasks where each person's package of tasks is comparably empowering to everyone else's package of tasks. We call that balanced job complexes or sometimes, for short, balanced jobs. I interject. It seems this was another core feature. First, self-managing councils. Second, balanced jobs. Then RPS added beyond just values to settle on an economic vision. I wonder if others, if really everyone in RPS, could describe it at least as succinctly but compellingly as Andre does.
Speaker 1:Andre continues with balanced jobs. Each person would do a mix of tasks they are capable of and comfortable at. The mix you would do and the mix I would do and the mix everyone else would do would be balanced from one person to the next for the empowering effect of work on the worker doing it. This balancing or spreading of empowering tasks among all jobs, rather than just a few jobs, would occur not only inside each workplace but across workplaces as well. We would all have responsibility for an array of tasks that sum to comparably empowering overall situation. Due to that, we would all be comparably prepared by our daily work life to confidently participate in workers' and consumers' councils and in other social engagements as well.
Speaker 1:Miguel says so. You have briefly outlined a new approach to making decisions and a new division of labor. But what about income and wealth? What is each person's rightful claim on the social product? How much should we get? What is responsible and fair? What works? And I hope you will also discuss doubts people had with us after we get the overall vision conveyed. So, miguel RPS said, people who are too young or too old or who are otherwise unable to work gainfully should get a full income anyhow, which wasn't particularly new, but also that people who can work should have an income share that depends only on the duration, intensity and onerousness of their socially valued labor and that part was new.
Speaker 1:If I work longer, for example during overtime, I should get more. If I work harder, for example during overtime, I should get more. If I work harder, for example at a faster pace, I should get more. And if I work under worse conditions, for example at an open furnace, I should get more. And I shouldn't get income for work that doesn't produce outputs that others value. I shouldn't get paid for work I can't do sufficiently well or that produces what other people don't want. I should get income only for socially valued work, and for that work again I should earn more.
Speaker 1:For working longer, for working more intensely or for working at more onerous tasks. The approach is fair. It is the same norm for everyone. It can't generate overly wide income differences. It also provides sensible incentives, that is, it gives us reason to contribute to society's product what we sensibly can. Our effort, in other words, is well-directed and it conveys to consumers and producers alike indicators of people's work and consumption preferences.
Speaker 1:But Andre, what about getting a really high income? Because what I do isn't just liked, it is loved or really, really important. It was, of course, a frequent question. Miguel RPS said I shouldn't be remunerated as an athlete, a singer or anything else for which my abilities don't allow me to produce outputs others want to have. I should be remunerated only for anything I do well enough for my efforts to be socially valuable. But in addition, I shouldn't get income for being an owner that's gone, or because I have the power to take it, or for having great talents, say, or due to the actual value of my desired output. If I want to consume more out of the total social product than average, I should be able to do so only by virtue of working more hours or more intensely, or perhaps doing some more onerous tasks, as long as I work in a balanced job and as long as I arrange my activities compatibly with my workers' counsel. But the rate of pay per hour of socially useful average intensity work under comparable conditions should be the same for everyone. If you were born with a great voice or incredible strength or reflexes, or even great mental facility, well, that is luck in the genetic lottery you should not get the joy of that luck and on top of such luck get great income.
Speaker 1:Equity calls for income differences to reward effort and sacrifice, but not to reward genetic endowment or better equipment and so on. Of course there is a longer story, but RPS, intellectually settled on this, is fair, which means as consistent with its central values. But we realized as well that this type remuneration was needed to facilitate consumption, matching production, to convey sensible incentives and to unearth and convey essential indicators of people's preferences for leisure and for different kinds of work and different products. I interject Again one wonders how they grew support for such vision. How were objections addressed? Okay, but what about allocation, asked Miguel. Allocation is about determining what and how much to produce and consume and who gets what specific things.
Speaker 1:Rps members knew we needed to replace markets and central planning with a system that could get allocation accomplished consistently while preserving RPS's other institutional aims and promoting RPS values. Rps felt that is to have as goals council self-management, balanced jobs and equitable remuneration was all well and good. But if we settled for an allocation system that would subvert all of that, such as markets or central planning, then we'd subvert our own goals. The idea here was simple and applied over and over in realm after realm, and applied over and over in realm after realm. Key institutions that have major effects on people's circumstances had to be compatible with other such institutions. It wouldn't do to seek political institutions incompatible with desired gender relations, nor the reverse. Nor would it do to have some economic institutions incompatible with and therefore oriented to subvert and replace other economic institutions. It wouldn't do, for example, to have unbalanced jobs within self-managing councils the former would subvert the latter. Similarly, we knew we couldn't combine market competition or central planning's authoritarianism with equity and self-management the former would subvert the latter.
Speaker 1:So, regarding allocation, we settled on advocating cooperative negotiation among workers and consumers' councils in place of currently and historically more familiar options. Place of currently and historically more familiar options, each council would announce desires and then modify their offers in light of what others offered. Various structures would help with assessing costs, benefits and preferences. There would be no center or periphery, no top or bottom. Actors would collectively self-manage their production and consumption in light of emergent measures of personal, social and environmental costs and benefits. Personal motives and behaviors of allocation would mess compatibly with those of self-managed councils. Balanced jobs and remuneration for duration, intensity and onerousness of socially valued labor. Again, can you make it more specific, andre Less? Abstract Sure, miguel.
Speaker 1:Rps favors workers and consumers in their workplace and neighborhood councils, making known their desires and then steadily updating their offers, their proposals, in light of others' offers or proposals in an unfolding negotiation. Workers propose their activities to provide bicycles, foodstuff, violins, toys, services, water, concerts or whatever else. Consumers indicate their desired consumption of bicycles, foodstuffs, violins, toys, services, water, concerts and whatever else. Then community and industry agencies summarize their proposals, costs and benefits. Workers and consumers in their councils assess the estimated costs and benefits and learn of new jobs and products so they can self-manage production and consumption in light of their personal, social and environmental effects and accordingly adapt their offers.
Speaker 1:Is there extra desire for what we propose to produce or insufficient desire for it? When there is a workable mesh of proposals from producers and consumers, it becomes a plan to implement. Of course, as the year proceeds, the plan gets updated as circumstances and tastes change, but the updates too, when needed, are collectively, cooperatively, self-managed, as are choices about longer-term issues like investments and future potentials. Choices about longer-term issues like investments and future potentials. So, while I am, of course, grossly summarizing, rps argued that this economic vision for decision-making division of labor, income and allocation could accomplish production, consumption and allocation without class division and in accord with people's needs and desires, as well as with ecological sustainability and social harmony. I interject Even if one has doubts, which is perfectly reasonable, of course, given how succinct this presentation is. Consider the scope and importance of the claim. If it proves true, it should have been easy to get people to invest some time to get a good grip on the whole proposal, not just a summary of it, so they could then assess it themselves, hoping its ambitious claims were warranted but wanting to test the likelihood. Sadly, I doubt it was as easy to get serious attention, discussion, debate, criticism, reaction as it ought to have been, but I guess they persevered. I hope Miguel says a bit more about that. Andre continues.
Speaker 1:Rps members in workplaces and communities began to agitate for reforms leading toward the preferred full results. This was by no means easy. Everyone used markets and other current practices and arrangements and had grown up with them and accommodated to them. To make a case that we had to replace old, familiar features took time and serious attention. In some cases this has already taken us to partial cooperative planning, for example, where federations of changed workplaces within industries mutually negotiate their connections and where communities and surrounding providers and what some have called communal arrangements, cooperatively negotiate their entwined production and consumption.
Speaker 1:If the RPS claims for the benefits of full-scale participatory planning prove true, as I and other RPS members believe they will, then the overall RPS economic vision, of course, filled out with lots of contingent details in different workplaces, industries and locales, will be a worthy alternative to capitalism and also to what has been called market or centrally planned socialism, which we call coordinatorism, I interject. So there is the broad strokes, visionary logic. Settle on guiding values, find what obstructs desired values, conceive alternatives deemed essential to fulfill the desired values. Then, in practice and based on experience and experiment, seek all that and as well, when able, append to all the core scaffolding of defining features contingent details, sometimes regarding aspects even of those core features, and, of course, going in many ways beyond those core features. Andre, come on, it can't be that this vision arose and won support without dissent. What was that like? I interject. Gotta admit, when the oral history interviewer asks questions, you want answers to you, gotta smile, andre replies. You're quite right, of course, miguel.
Speaker 1:Outside RPS, resistance to these ideas typically claimed that equitable remuneration would provide insufficient incentives to elicit creativity and productivity, that balanced job complexes and self-management would sacrifice quality for false justice and that participatory planning would sacrifice efficiency and even viability for false solidarity. Replies that surfaced in countless exchanges, debates and presentations came down ultimately to demonstrating that equitable remuneration is not only morally sound and socially positive, but also able to deliver needed information and to elicit desirable levels of both work and creativity levels of both work and creativity. Balanced job complexes and self-management are not only morally sound and socially positive, they also unleash huge swaths of human creativity and capacity. Rather than wasting either, they eliminate not only injustice but also incredible waste associated with class division, and participatory planning will not only eliminate the motivational, informational, antisocial ills of markets, the authoritarianism of central planning and the ecological irrationality of both. It will also positively unearth the information needed for sound choices and mesh, compatibly with equitable remuneration, self-management and classlessness.
Speaker 1:Can you describe a little how this went? What those debates with external critics criticizing from outside RPS were like? Sure, miguel, an external critic would say things like your aims are morally nice, attractive, arguably even elegant, but they are incredibly unreal. For example, your equitable remuneration seems fair, but it would not elicit creativity and productivity. We'd have impoverished fairness, your balanced job complexes and self-management would avoid the class division you bemoan, but they would also sacrifice quality. We would control our own suffering due to loss of outputs. Then your participatory planning would involve everyone, but it would also squander efficiency. We would preside cooperatively over chaotic haggling that would waste endless time. Your views are nonsense on stilts. Someone in RPS might start to answer. On the contrary, equitable remuneration is morally sound and socially positive, as you acknowledge. But it will also provide appropriate incentives to work harder, longer or at more onerous tasks, producing socially valued products. And that is exactly what good incentives should do.
Speaker 1:Paying for genetic endowment doesn't get us to improve our inborn talents. Even paying for better tools doesn't cause the recipient of the pay to improve the tools. That can be accomplished by way of recognizing the social benefit of better tools. Remunerating effort and sacrifice elicits what we can deliver. But then another critic might say okay, perhaps, but balanced job complexes are ridiculous. If the more capable have to do a fair share of disempowering tasks, we will lose some of their productivity. If the less wise help make decisions, we will get less intelligent decisions. These are real and fair concerns, an RPS member might reply. But no, balanced jobs and self-management are not only fair, they will also unleash the otherwise stunted human capacities of the 80% whose capacities are squandered, and they will eliminate wasteful class conflict. You are right that we will lose productivity from about a fifth of the population due to their not doing only what they are best at and instead sharing less empowering tasks. That's true, but we will gain from four-fifths of the population doing some of what they become best at and not doing only what is disempowering, as well as from the benefits of not being class divided. Similarly, participatory planning will not only involve everyone. It will eliminate the motivational and informational ills of markets, the authoritarianism of central planning and the ecological irrationality of both.
Speaker 1:I interject as a full discussion. In addition to being a bit repetitive, this would certainly be too succinct. I would guess Miguel didn't want to seek more and then more, again and again, because he knew it would get book-length, and not only here discussing economic vision but other visions as well. The irony is that economics is often thought more difficult than other topics but is actually easier because it can be more precise, less variegated, so it's possible to get more into the innards of it. Miguel could keep on with economics, seeking more evidence and logic, even math proofs, for example. But it would go too far With other areas that didn't exist. But the range of possibilities was much greater, as the interviewees indicated. At any rate, did these future revolutionaries clarify how they thought about vision enough so readers could assess their methods and results, go deeper and develop their own thoughts? That is the real question, the real standard Miguel and his interviewees may have met or not. I found the discussion fair and balanced, which you could probably tell from the way I made few interjections so far.
Speaker 1:You mentioned earlier that there were critics inside the RPS organization and project as well. Can you give some indication of this kind of internal criticism? Sure Within RPS among its members? Debates around economic vision were mostly about the implications of different visionary commitments for strategic success. No one got too animated, or really animated at all, within RPS about the values themselves. They were shared.
Speaker 1:Similarly, those within RPS who challenged the emerging vision did not often claim that if implemented, it would be harmful or even less desirable than some other approach. Instead, what we might call internal critics tended to feel that at the outset of RPS, at the then current stage of history, the proposed vision risked alienating too many people to the detriment of RPS's advance. For example, such a critic might say I get that we need full classlessness, but I think we can't afford to lose coordinators' potential support along the way. I prefer to currently offer a less controversial vision that's closer to current potentials. So we don't immediately overtly challenge coordinator class advantages due to rejecting the corporate division of labor. To that I might have responded. For example of course it would be idiotic to write the coordinator class off. We want lawyers, doctors, engineers and the rest involved. But for us to not admit our full aims would be dishonest and more it would repel many workers, corrode morale and, worst of all, risk entrenching coordinator rule. Why can't we tell the truth about what we want and also reach many coordinators without risking workers feeling jettisoned? Some critics fears that a full vision will cause our coordinators to not relate to RPS are correct. But as each year passes I believe more coordinator class members will join us and because we refuse to compromise or vacillate on the associated issues, classlessness will remain our goal.
Speaker 1:So one side was saying we should be more careful not to alienate coordinator class identified people. We cannot afford their absence from activism, both for reasons of numbers and also for reasons of needing various skills they now monopolize and can bring. The other side and I was on it agreed that welcoming coordinator class involvement was important and desirable, but argued that to welcome coordinator involvement without being clear about our ultimate aims would not only be manipulative, it would also interfere with attaining what was sought on two counts First, the duplicity would repel many. But second, and ultimately primary, to seek coordinator involvement without simultaneously addressing the dangers of coordinator co-optation of the entire project invited disaster. To advance without coordinator class folks involved would be difficult, so we should certainly try to avoid too much of that. However, to advance with coordinator class involvement but without attention to the potential for it to subvert our other aims invited a kind of suicide. If we had anti-capitalist but not anti-coordinatorist economic vision, we would wind up with no victory at all or with a project subordinate to coordinator class interests and aims, as has happened in the past, even against activists' best intentions.
Speaker 1:The second position ultimately won overwhelmingly, and this was a case in which it was hard to maintain the minority position at the same time as pursuing the winning one. The best we could do was to have a standing committee to continually re-evaluate visionary commitments and their strategic implications in light of learning more about each from RPS developments more generally. And we did that. And it wasn't long before the emphasis moved toward discerning further essential aspects of the favored vision. Move toward discerning further essential aspects of the favored vision, with the minority positions to drop balanced job complexes pretty much declining into complete inattention. What remained at all times, however, was a focus on how best to grow and develop RPS in accord with attaining its ultimate goals.
Speaker 1:This must have involved some losses. No, yes, miguel. I should add that some did leave the organization over these issues. But I think it is fair to also note that few, if any, of those who did so were working class and that, while each person who left over this difference operated for a time in progressive political ways, as they fell back into daily life coordinator involvements they tended to fall away from dissent or, when they decided to persist in it, they rejoined RPS. The fear that the full vision would cause some coordinator class people to not relate positively to RPS was again correct, particularly for the folks arguing it. But for many others, and more as each month and year passed, the prediction was wrong and the danger that catering to and, as a consequence, elevating coordinator values and structures would impose was evident not only from thinking it through but also from history. Indeed, one of the most celebratory dynamics occurring throughout society is not just old coordinator class members signing up to RPS, but they're teaching their worthy skills to workers and dispensing with their non-worthy practices and attitudes. It has been quite parallel, for example, to whites joining the fight against racism and to men joining the fight against sexism, but often, in the case of class, with even larger personal material losses and far less historical precedent.
Speaker 1:But you mentioned internal resistance to participatory planning as well and didn't clarify what that was about and how it worked out. In one sense, miguel, it was quite similar. For example, advocates ran into resistance to the idea of cooperatively negotiating economic activities, based on fears from critics that it would take too long, where some wanted participatory economics without balanced jobs. In this latter case it was to have the benefits of escaping markets and central planning without incurring the resistance that some would have to participatory plannings, having consumers propose their consumption choices and all participants assess proposals by others to modify their own toward meshing. In an extreme case the critic would say let's do it, let's do participatory economics, but without consumer proposals, by instead having computers and experts calculate consumer wants and in a far less extreme case, let's do it, but without conveying qualitative as well as quantitative information during the planning process so as to reduce time spent. In fact, let's have consumers and producers each concern themselves only with their own situations and notice about others only the effects of their proposals on prices.
Speaker 1:You can no doubt feel already that it would take us too deeply into planning, I think, to fully rehearse these disputes. But summarized it was for the critics roughly how do we get the benefits of participatory planning and avoid the catastrophic debits of markets or central planning without running up against doubts? This was motivationally sort of like it was, for how do we get classlessness, but without balanced jobs or confronting the coordinator worker class division head-on? The interesting part, at least to my mind, was that, in addition to being far too easily sidetracked by doubts, the critics of participatory planning got caught up in references to efficiency, which for them meant don't waste time, and in my view they failed to understand or remember that efficiency as a useful concept means accomplish what you want without wasting what you value. So saving time, which is often good, was, when done at the expense of, for example, solidarity or even classlessness, not good and actually not efficient. Or even classlessness, not good and actually not efficient.
Speaker 1:Okay, says Miguel, you are right, andre, we shouldn't get too deep into all that here. Readers can consult more exhaustive presentations and debates. But still, most generally, is what you seek for economy, socialism, but with a twist. If by socialism, miguel, you mean the first type, with central planning or market allocation and a corporate division of labor that empowers some and disempowers most, then our twist is such a huge basic transformation that using the same term socialism for that and for our vision would be senseless. Yes, these two visions each get rid of private ownership, but beyond that they totally diverge. And if by socialism you instead mean the kind like Bernie Sanders and what were called social democrats openly advocated, then our twist is a fundamental enlargement, an enrichment that gets to the heart of matters, rather than stopping at corrective policies without changing underlying institutions.
Speaker 1:Still, andre, many must have wondered is RPS seeking socialism or not? Rps seeks a goal profoundly different than the first thing that was called socialism. That was authoritarian, class-divided market or centrally planned corporate-style economics plus usually a compatible one-party state out of the old Soviet Union. It was often called 20th century socialism and RPS rejected its institutional commitments and the RPS goal also differs profoundly by being much more than the second thing that was called socialism meant, which was ultimately still capitalism, but with the government trying to seriously alleviate pains and even significantly benefit working people. That was often called social democracy.
Speaker 1:Are you dodging the question, andre? It is not a good look. No, I am not, miguel, I am just being honest. The issue is complicated, but only due to the words having multiple meanings. Ultimately, some in RPS called our economic aim participatory socialism, and in doing so, they tried to alter the word socialism's connotations. I do that sometimes, but other times, like many other members of RPS, I call our economic aim participatory economics and our overall aim participatory society, to avoid confusion over the word socialism's various connotations. The key point, though, is that, in either case, rps members all seek the same new system, and that's what matters most.
Speaker 1:My own understanding of the RPS economic vision goes back to some books that in turn, go back many decades. Perhaps, when this oral history appears, someone will append references. Otherwise, just search participatory economics and you will find plenty. I interject, and so, as a participatory economy advocate, it is unsurprising I didn't have much to interject in this section. Either that or I would have gone on way too long.
Speaker 1:Miguel turns to a new topic with Reverend Stephen Du Bois. Stephen, how did you become deeply involved in ecological activism? I happened to be in Haiti during a massive hurricane in 2016. I saw water swamp hopes, wipe out homes and take lives. It was devastating. I remember literally seeing a person drown miserably, too far away to help. I felt utterly impotent and learned the hard way that nature does not fight according to our rules, and it was not just depressing but frightening and then, in short order, infuriating. The last emotion, not so priest-like, I felt, for a few reasons. On the one hand, the local poverty and lack of serious international help made the damage even more devastating than the winds and water entailed. On the other hand, I realized, due to directly experiencing it, that the storm itself wasn't just nature howling. This storm, and so many others like it, since owed significantly to corporate elites making earth-distorting decisions. Can you imagine someone standing up on a hill and calling forth a hurricane or a tornado to ravage others? Strip away all the bull. And that is exactly what the fossil fuel industry executives did, or, at the very least, allowed.
Speaker 1:I was only 15 for that hurricane, but I had already heard a bit about global warming and climate change in school and from my parents. Still, I was a kid and everything seemed possible. Nothing seemed so bad that I should be deterred from my daily wants. I had personal worlds to conquer. Global warming was beyond my reach, but the hurricane changed that. I was right there. I felt its fury. I couldn't say to it okay, I've had enough, Stop already. It was relentless.
Speaker 1:I now had an experience to go with what I had read about global warming. Global warming wasn't just scientific blather and paranoia or fear-mongering. It wasn't a scam. It wasn't abstract and exaggerated. It was horrendous disasters crushing humans and places. It was as real as rain, just much, much more deadly. I had a hard time even writing myself from the experience. If you haven't been in a really major storm, it is shattering, assuming you allow the whole thing to register, and I did, and so I was shattered. But then I gained back some equilibrium and I started to read about the interconnections of living things and their environments and about the effects of human choices on both. If being in the storm was frightening, and it was then reading and thinking about global warming, as compared to my prior practice of just letting it all slide by was even more frightening. Quarrels for action weren't alarmist. If we didn't change our ways, devastation would rain down from the skies and rise up from the oceans. It would be even greater than the horrors of war, which I was also coming to understand, were almost incalculable. So I became green and then seriously radical.
Speaker 1:Did you feel, asked Miguel, there was a turning point from just witnessing ecological decline to being on a path toward ecological success? I think that is a very good way to pose the question, because it perfectly captures the reality. The more I read, the more I felt that most people were either delusional to deny the obvious, or that they admitted it, at least somewhat, but just went on about their lives in the belief that whatever will be will be Doing. Anything to affect the possibilities was beyond them. It was the alienation of our times. I soon realized this was precisely the popular state of mind that a corrupt, unjust and, in this case, effectively suicidal system needed in order to maintain its ways without serious interruption. Yet even knowing that didn't always rouse people from being quiet. People knew often the situation and even its utility for elites and disastrous consequences for themselves, but so what? They still felt powerless, albeit also morbidly depressed.
Speaker 1:I soon realized that to alter our deadly trajectory, people would have to see a clear path to a better situation. They would have to see how they could lend their energies so that their contribution would matter, which is why I think the turning point was when significant sectors of the population not only came to believe in the reality and immense danger of global warming and indeed of ecological dissolution more broadly, but also to realize there was a route to survival and to dignity that they could meaningfully contribute to. Of course, some people honestly thought buying a long-lasting light bulb, keeping their thermostat down or taking short showers was all they could or should concern themselves with. But most people knew that that was barely even stopgap. Most people knew the economy had to transform away from fossil fuels toward carbon-free, renewable energy, among many other associated changes, and most people knew that such transformations would require massive public pressure and then a new system. So the issue for each person was can I contribute to generating the pressure within my means and worth my time, given my likely, personally very modest impact? And this possibility, even this inevitability of their own personal efficacy, is what RPS had to get people to see if they would become part of the broad movements and of RPS itself. When that message got through to millions of people not reams of documentation about climate disasters and abysmal prospects, but a simple message about the changes that could correct the faults and especially about the activist behaviors that could make those changes happen I think we passed the turning point.
Speaker 1:But, stephen, was the agenda no growth, anti-growth or what? And was the vision just about economic change or other dimensions as well? And was the vision just about economic change or other dimensions as well? Along the way, this was at times confusing and confused. Regarding economic institutions, the implication was pretty clear. It meant decisions had to account properly for ecological implications, including using resources generating pollution and so on. Ecology had to be accounted for, and that meant participatory planning had to have core features that facilitated doing so. And while discussing all that here would take us afield. Ecological accounting was indeed core to the economic vision, but beyond the purely economic, there also had to be room for political decisions mandating certain ecological practices and preventing others. That too was in the vision. More institutions needed to permit, and indeed foster, people being concerned not only with now but with tomorrow and even with well beyond tomorrow.
Speaker 1:At the same time, some formulations tried to capture all that, but missed. Saying no growth or saying degrowth was confusing. It was taken by its best and most popular adherents to mean basically what I have conveyed. We should function ecologically sensibly, but the words themselves tended to focus attention on output per se, which wasn't constructive, compared to focusing on output that did excessive harm or good. We actually often had to grow industries like to develop and disseminate alternative energy sources, as well as to generate products enhancing well-being, even as we reduced or literally eliminated industries whose output was, for ecological reasons, counterproductive and even suicidal. Rps bridged the linguistic problems to arrive at the substantive agreement about aims. Still ask Miguel no growth, degrowth or what? If you insist on using the word growth, miguel, and orienting in relation to it, I would say post-growth, meaning we needed to take our eyes and concepts away from growth and place them on the ecological consequences of production and consumption, as well as on its immediate social and material consequences for producers and consumers. Miguel now moved his focus to war and peace. Bert, what do you think are the prospects for world affairs with a full RPS victory in the US?
Speaker 1:Back during the US war in Vietnam and the Indochina, the government used as a pretext what they called the domino theory. The idea was that if a country fell into the hands of the Soviets, in turn more countries would fall into their hands to everyone's detriment. In turn, more countries would fall into their hands to everyone's detriment. So if Vietnam went, thailand, indonesia and then Japan would follow, due to emboldened Russian imperial conquests. It was idiocy, of course, as it was stated, but a variant of the same refrain had considerable truth. That was called, I think for the first time, by Chomsky, the threat of a good example. His idea was if a country could extricate itself from abject subservience to US or other domination, then what might follow? What lessons might other countries learn that could fuel further defections? If Vietnam could show that it was possible to escape US domination, why not other countries, not only in Indochina but all over the world? Of course, in this interpretation of the falling dominoes dynamic, what elites feared was a good thing and trying to prevent it was a horrible thing. But this different image of countries falling like dominoes, meaning freeing themselves from subservience, not least spurred by the prior successes of others, had some basis. The US reply was to make the carpet-bombed human cost of extrication too high to contemplate.
Speaker 1:There are many conceivable dimensions of a US full RPS victory for world affairs. First and most direct, with the US no longer pursuing imperial ambitions and instead driven by sentiments of solidarity and internationalism, a main cause of international violations will be removed. The largest, no, not the only obstacle to peaceful world affairs will be gone. Another impact, however, is, ironically, the threat of a good example. If the population of the US can escape tutelage to old structural institutional forms to create a new society, then why not others as well? We already see this happening all around the world, and a case can be made, for that matter, that that early Vietnamese example, though not ultimately fully successful for Vietnam and never really adopting RPS-style content, did spread lessons and aspirations worldwide that later arguably even fueled RPS itself. I happen to think or perhaps it is just that I like to think that was the case. That was the case. At any rate, I think full RPS victory in the US will shortly follow or proceed comparable victories for new social forms in most, if not all, of the world.
Speaker 1:Once some, indeed many, major countries are on the side of justice, how long can injustice prevail? It loses its material defenders and even more it loses its aura of inevitability. What, then, burt, is the positive RPS view on international relations? It is ultimately a pretty simple extension of RPS values from the national to the international arena. The aim is self-management, classlessness, intercommunalism and feminism for all. But no approach can undo centuries of distorted economic and social development in minutes across the globe, any more than we can do that overnight in any one country. But as countries adopt new institutions and dynamics, there is no worthy reason why some should endlessly retain great advantages from the past and others endlessly retain giant deficits. So the main international point is to find a way to redress inequality so that we live in a world where there is equity, solidarity, self-management and diversity, not only within some countries but within all countries and across their borders as well. So we encounter the usual RPS question how do we do that? History will reveal a full answer, but one aspect will surely be engaging in international trade in a new way.
Speaker 1:Trade, when not overtly horrendously vile, as in exploitative extraction and colonial domination, should yield overall benefits for all involved. Exchange should occur when one party which has some item should choose to enter an agreement to provide it to another party that lacks that item but has others to exchange, where overall benefits outweigh overall costs. But how should the overall benefits of such an exchange accrue to the two parties In market transactions and in international market and geopolitical relations, even when grotesque, overt looting isn't actually occurring, the benefits of trade accrue in accord with bargaining power, not justice. The bulk of the benefits therefore go to the more powerful party and the gap between a more powerful actor and a weaker actor thereby widens. If I start with more, I get more benefit. So even though you get some gain, my advantage grows. In the face of that, a simple, manageable RPS approach is to reverse the pattern. The bulk of the benefits of international trade and all international exchange should accrue to the poorer country every time. That, plus direct transfers from wealthier to poorer countries, would be the essence of international agreements among RPS-style countries operating in a better future.
Speaker 1:Patty asks Miguel, as an anti-war activist, did you believe, when joining RPS, that it would usher in an end to war? Do you now think it will? Suppose I asked you, miguel, did you believe, when becoming involved with RPS, that it would usher in an end to crime? Do you now think it will? I hope you would answer as I would. No, I did not believe that.
Speaker 1:I thought it would hugely diminish crime, not only because people would have enhanced social motivations and desires, but also because people would never be desperate for income on the one hand, and on the other hand there would be no way to benefit materially from crime on any significant scale. For example, excessive wealth accrued by theft or any other crime would be immediately evident to all because it could not exist, could not arise from legal, morally sound behavior. When you see great wealth you would see a person who is benefiting from crime period. The social lives of citizens would engender far greater mutual aid or perhaps, better put, would not stifle such sentiments. But still there could be all manner of pathologies leading to violations or to honest disagreements or to fierce anger and so on. So I suspect you wouldn't have said we will wind up with no crime, just that we will have vastly less crime and much better policy for dealing with it.
Speaker 1:So by analogy you might think that I would answer with RPS success, the odds of wars and otherwise violent engagements between countries would diminish hugely. But war will not disappear. But I actually think and I hope that despite the seeming analogy, a couple of additional factors bearing on war between countries as compared to crime inside countries will make that expectation too cautious. One factor is that war is a collective undertaking. It is not some lone person doing something criminal. War involves large and even vast numbers of people. What's more, war depends on prior involvement in things like arms production and military organization and training. I think the collective scale of war preparation and war making mean that the reduced motivations for war and the reduced mentalities willing to accommodate to war and the reduced preparedness for war will literally mean an end to war. You could have, I suppose, lone advocates of war, like you can have lone criminals, but once social relations are transformed, I don't believe you will have whole countries even able, much less willing or eager, to wage war.
Speaker 1:What have you felt to be the most important steps already taken, bert, on the road to no more war? In a general sense, the steady emergence of RPS-like movements and organizations in countries all over the world seems paramount to me. It is precisely the way these organizations link concerns about attaining peace with concerns about attaining justice and link both with positive program and vision seeking new institutions. That matters even more than single-issue efforts on behalf of peace in this or that world conflict zone. As important as those efforts are, of course, diverse efforts against specific hostilities and wars have also been pivotal. But if I had to pick one thing that has turned the corner toward literally eliminating war, it would probably be the massive campaigns to transform military bases around the world into vehicles for social programs of reconstruction and protection against natural disasters. Those campaigns not only are anti-war and anti-injustice, they offer positive alternatives and make clear that arguments against change on these fronts are not about what is possible, but only about what will best benefit the rich and powerful. I have been privileged to attend numerous demonstrations and participate in many campaigns and not only in the US around demobilizing or retooling military bases. For me, seeing not just the anti-war sentiment but the sense of possibility and optimism these nourish has been profoundly moving. Connecting desires for ecological sanity and equitable reconstruction to anti-war desires, while also watching out for the well-being of the soldiers and their communities and whole countries affected, has been so exemplary that it just keeps gaining ever more support. It causes me to think the aim peace for all time is within our grasp. The next really big dance may well be on the graves of the world's last masters of war.
Speaker 1:Miguel changes topic again and asks Lydia, would you like to add any final comment about the core ideas, values and vision of RPS before the oral history shifts back to examining more contextual historical events. Well, there is much more to say. Of course, books upon books have been written, but I think the overview you have elicited has been good, albeit also demanding due to being so succinct, and I would like to add only two things which may not be as evident as they should be. First, rps vision has always been rooted in a clear statement of values. It has always been about determining what we desire for humanity in the shape of guiding values and then trying our best to implement institutions consistent with those values. This is actually different than many other visionary approaches. It is not unusual, for example, to look at the present and find instance after instance of undesirable attributes, with visionary thinking then being to adapt from what we have to arrive at replacements, one after another. Our difference from that approach is that in RPS we ask what do we want? If it is unreal or impossible, okay, we try again. But once we settle on what we want, we don't then keep letting habituation with what we see all around us curtail conceiving what is needed to attain what we want. I guess it sounds a little academic, but it really isn't. It is the difference between vision that tinkers with the present and often fails to get much beyond that, and vision that desires a vastly better future and isn't mentally saddled by the chains of today.
Speaker 1:Another virtue of the values-first approach is that it speaks to people in a way rooted in their humanity rather than in a way that arises from assessing their inhumanities. It is positive rather than negative. It celebrates aims rather than excoriating shackles oh, it does the latter too, of course, sometimes. But the positive aspirations drive the process, and this is one of the key things RPS brings to the table, beyond very specific commitments. You said you had two things you wanted to add. Yes, miguel.
Speaker 1:The second thing I would like to say is that concepts, values and vision are free creations of human thought and discussion. They are not, or should not be products of the will of a king, priest or god above, or even of a wise sage. Only collective assessment, testing and advocacy can establish their worth. But their being human creations also means they can be flawed, time-bound and otherwise need frequent renovation. Values may embody misconceptions that render one or more contrary to our intents. Concepts may have insufficient scope, make unwarranted simplifications or diverge from accuracy. Vision may be unattainable or internally contradictory, or vision could have unforeseen negative consequences. Rps recognizes its own possible fallibility. It constantly tests and upgrades its commitments. Here is how I think of it.
Speaker 1:Scientists are just like all the rest of us. They sometimes have biases that distort their perceptions. They sometimes develop self-serving ways of seeing or psychological commitments to pet ideas or even to ideas which their reputations or positions depend on. But science is supposed to serve truth. It is supposed to always seek to alter itself, to find and correct flaws and develop new understanding, to continually self-renovate. Science doesn't merely say to scientists be good, innovate, don't perpetuate. No, science incorporates diverse arrangements, roles and incentives meant to create an inquiring, flexible and always forward-reaching mindset. It doesn't always work, to be sure, but it is a priority in a way that doesn't exist, say, in religious studies or in old-style politics of the past, even, and perhaps even most forcefully, in the ones that called themselves scientific, and perhaps even most forcefully in the ones that called themselves scientific.
Speaker 1:My point is that RPS very self-consciously sees its concepts, values and vision the way science sees its theories. We try to make them as optimal as we can, but we try not to become so wedded to our beliefs that we try to ward off improvements just to preserve the past and our connection with it. Not all of us do this equally well and no individual does it perfectly, but because RPS prioritizes this kind of flexible and growth-oriented approach and because it sets aside resources and time explicitly for the purpose, it most often attains the thought flexibility. This RPS approach is opposite to the usual Talmudic approach to ideology. It is anti-dogma, anti-sectarian, and I think it is a key to RPS virtue, perhaps even the most important one, certainly one that played a big part in my becoming and remaining a member.
Speaker 1:Bert, you are a physicist. Do Lydia's words here resonate for you too? Does your science work have any impact on your political work? I think Lydia has it exactly right, and I only wish all physicists always understood her points, though I think most do, even if we don't all always admit it. Rabbit holes can capture scientists too.
Speaker 1:In my life in science, I have to conceive ideas, figure ways to test them, induce people or myself to do the tests, examine the results and then either rejoice in the merit of the ideas displayed or move on to other ideas more likely to address the test results. Revolutionary politics should work similarly, but difficulties arise In social situations. The number of variables is often too high to get clear results. Often you can't arrange experiments to give definitive information about what works and what doesn't. Even in physics it typically pays to keep respectable ideas around after they seem to fail, in case new information makes them important again or examining them again reveals a new angle and information that yields valuable insights. This is even more true in political activism, where definitive results are much harder to come by. We should test ideas and constantly try to improve them, not to ward off criticism, as if finding fault would be harmful.
Speaker 1:There is another instructive proviso. When we lack good evidence in science or in movement building, we are sometimes left with nothing but intuition and speculation. If speculations, informed guesses, are carefully broached and tested, no problem. They either induce insights or not, and we act accordingly. But if we tend to get wrapped up in our speculations, if we lack evidence for them but proclaim them as if they are some kind of gospel, then we are on the road to sectarianism. We go down a rabbit hole with very slick walls. The lesson Don't take speculation for more than the guess that it is.
Speaker 1:On your other question, I don't think my physics has any lessons for people conducting their daily affairs.
Speaker 1:The life and times of elementary particles and cosmological models is way too distant from the life and times of activists and their social visions for the substance to have any relevance. For that, actually, the truth is physics has been rife with speculation for a bunch of decades now, sometimes yielding a kind of scientific spectarianism. But I do think the approach of scientists at its best and it is not always at its best to both new and to old ideas and to evidence and logic, and again, only at our best and to each other as well, does have lessons for people conducting their daily affairs and particularly for people trying to improve society. And I think Lydia enunciated those lessons perfectly. I think RPS's desires to eliminate the coordinator worker class division may prove the best guarantor of logic and evidence above and beyond speculation and dogma since the birth of modern science. I guess we will see, and that's when we go ended the 14th chapter I guess it is of the oral history. And so all that said this is Mike Albert signing off for Revolution Z. Until next time.