Written by Michael
Löwy and first published at Life on the Left. Translated into English from the original French by
Richard Fidler.
The need for
economic planning in any serious and radical process of socio-ecological
transition is winning greater acceptance, in contrast to the traditional
positions of the Green parties, favorable to an ecological variant of “market
economy,” that is, “green capitalism.”
In her latest
book, Naomi Klein observes that any serious reaction to the climate threat
“involves recovering an art that has been relentlessly vilified during these
decades of market fundamentalism: planning.” This includes, in her view,
industrial planning, land use planning, agricultural planning, employment
planning for workers whose occupations are made obsolescent by the transition,
etc. “This means bringing back the idea of planning our economies based on
collective priorities rather than profitability….”[1]
Democratic
planning
The
socio-ecological transition — towards an ecosocialist alternative — implies
public control of the principal means of production and democratic planning.
Decisions concerning investment and technological change must be taken away
from the banks and capitalist businesses, if we want them to serve the common
good of society and respect for the environment.
Who should make
these decisions? Socialists often responded: “the workers.” In Volume III of
Capital, Marx defines socialism as a society of “the associated producers
rationally regulating their interchange (Stoffwechsel) with Nature.” However,
in Volume I of Capital, we find a broader approach: socialism is conceived as
“an association of free men, working with the means of production
(gemeinschaftlichen) held in common.” This is a much more appropriate concept:
production and consumption must be organized rationally not only by the “producers”
but also by consumers and, in fact, the whole of society, the productive or
“unproductive” population: students, youth, women (and men) homemakers, retired
persons, etc.
In this sense,
society as a whole will be free to democratically choose the productive lines
to be promoted and the level of resources that should be invested in education,
health or culture. The prices of goods themselves would no longer respond to
the law of supply and demand, but would be determined as much as possible according
to social, political and ecological criteria.
Far from being
“despotic” in itself, democratic planning is the exercise of the free
decision-making of the whole of society — a necessary exercise to free
ourselves from the alienating and reified “economic laws” and “iron cages”
within capitalist and bureaucratic structures. Democratic planning associated
with a reduction of working time would be a considerable step forward by
humanity towards what Marx called “the realm of freedom”: the increase in free
time is in fact a condition for the participation of workers in democratic
discussion and management of the economy and society.
Advocates of
the free market tirelessly use the failure of Soviet planning to justify their
categorical opposition to any form of organized economy. We know, without
getting into a discussion on the successes and failures of the Soviet
experience, that it was obviously a form of “dictatorship over needs,” to quote
the expression used by György Markus and his colleagues from the Budapest
School: an undemocratic and authoritarian system which gave a monopoly over
decisions to a small oligarchy of techno-bureaucrats.
It was not
planning that led to the dictatorship. It was the growing limitation of
democracy within the Soviet state and the establishment of totalitarian
bureaucratic power after Lenin’s death that gave rise to an increasingly
authoritarian and undemocratic planning system. If socialism is to be defined
as control of production processes by workers and the general population, the
Soviet Union under Stalin and his successors fell far short of this definition.
The failure of
the USSR illustrates the limits and contradictions of bureaucratic planning
with its flagrant ineffectiveness and arbitrariness: it cannot serve as an
argument against the application of genuinely democratic planning. The
socialist conception of planning is nothing other than the radical
democratization of the economy: if political decisions should not be made by a
small elite of leaders, why not apply the same principle to economic decisions?
The question of
the balance between market and planning mechanisms is undoubtedly a complex
issue: during the first phases of the new society, markets will certainly still
occupy a significant place, but as the transition to socialism progresses,
planning will become increasingly important.
In the
capitalist system use value is only a means — and often a device — subordinated
to exchange value and profitability (this in fact explains why there are so
many products in our society without any utility). In a planned socialist
economy, the production of goods and services responds only to the criterion of
use value, which entails spectacular economic, social and ecological
consequences.
Of course,
democratic planning concerns the major economic choices and not the
administration of local restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, small shops,
craft businesses or services. Likewise, it is important to emphasize that
planning does not contradict the self-management of workers in their production
units. Whereas the decision to convert, for example, an automobile factory to
bus or rail vehicle production would be up to society as a whole; the internal
organization and operation of the factory would be managed democratically by the
workers themselves.
There has been
much debate over the “centralized” or “decentralized” nature of planning, but
the important thing remains democratic control of the plan at all levels —
local, regional, national, continental and, hopefully, global — since
ecological issues such as climate warming are global and can only be addressed
at that level. This proposal could be called “comprehensive democratic
planning.” Even at this level, it is planning which contrasts with what is
often described as “central planning” because economic and social decisions are
not taken by any “center” but democratically determined by the populations
concerned.
There would, of
course, be tensions and contradictions between self-governing institutions and
local democratic administrations and other larger social groups. Negotiating
mechanisms can help resolve many such conflicts, but in the final analysis, it
will be up to the larger groups involved, and only if they are in the majority,
to exercise their right to impose their opinions.
To give an
example: a self-managed factory decides to dump its toxic waste in a river. The
population of an entire region is threatened by this pollution. It may then,
following a democratic debate, decide that the production of this unit must be
stopped until a satisfactory solution to control its waste is found. Ideally,
in an ecosocialist society, the factory workers themselves will have sufficient
ecological awareness to avoid making decisions that are dangerous for the
environment and the health of the local population.
However, the
fact of introducing methods to guarantee the decision-making power of the
population to defend the most general interests, as in the previous example,
does not mean that questions concerning internal management should not be
submitted to the citizens at the level of the factory, school, neighborhood,
hospital or village.
Ecosocialist
planning must be based on a democratic and pluralist debate, at each level of
decision. Organized in the form of parties, platforms or any other political
movement, the delegates of the planning bodies are elected and the various
proposals are presented to everyone they concern. In other words,
representative democracy must be enriched — and improved — by direct democracy
which allows people to choose directly — locally, nationally and, ultimately,
internationally — between different proposals.
The whole
population would then make decisions on free public transit, on a special tax
paid by car owners to subsidize public transport, on the subsidization of solar
energy to make it competitive with fossil energy, on the reduction of the hours
of work to 30, 25 hours a week or less, even if this entails a reduction in
production.
The democratic
nature of planning does not make it incompatible with the participation of
experts whose role is not to decide, but to present their arguments — often
different, even opposed — during the democratic decision-making process. As
Ernest Mandel said:
“Governments,
parties, planning boards, scientists, technocrats or whoever can make
suggestions, put forward proposals, try to influence people. To prevent them
from doing so would be to restrict political freedom. But under a multi-party
system, such proposals will never be unanimous: people will have the choice
between coherent alternatives. And the right and power to decide should be in
the hands of the majority of producers / consumers / citizens, not of anybody
else. What is paternalist or despotic about that?”[2]
A question
arises: what guarantee do we have that people will make the right choices,
those that protect the environment, even if the price to pay is to change part
of their consumption habits? There is no such “guarantee,” only the reasonable
prospect that the rationality of democratic decisions will triumph once the
fetishism of consumer goods has been abolished. People will of course make
mistakes by making bad choices, but don’t the experts make mistakes themselves?
It is impossible to imagine the construction of a new society without the
majority of the people having reached a great socialist and ecological
awareness thanks to their struggles, their self-education and their social
experience.
So, it is
reasonable to believe that serious errors — including decisions inconsistent
with environmental needs — will be corrected. In any case, one wonders if the
alternatives — the ruthless market, an ecological dictatorship of “experts” —
are not much more dangerous than the democratic process, with all its limits.
Admittedly, for
planning to work, there must be executive and technical bodies capable of
implementing decisions, but their authority would be limited by the permanent
and democratic control exercised by the lower levels, where workers’ self-management
takes place in the process of democratic administration. It cannot be expected,
of course, that the majority of the population will spend all of their free
time in self-management or participatory meetings. As Ernest Mandel remarked:
“Self-administration does not entail the disappearance of delegation. It
combines decision-making by the citizens with stricter control of delegates by
their respective electorate.”[3]
A long
process not free from contradictions
The transition
from the “destructive progress” of the capitalist system to ecosocialism is a
historic process, a revolutionary and constant transformation of society,
culture and mentalities — and politics in the broad sense, as defined above, is
undeniably at the heart of this process. It is important to specify that such
an evolution cannot be initiated without a revolutionary change in the social
and political structures and without the active support to the ecosocialist
program by a large majority of the population.
Socialist and
ecological awareness is a process whose decisive factors are the collective
experience and struggles of the population, which, starting from partial
confrontations at the local level, progress towards the prospect of a radical
change in society. This transition would lead not only to a new mode of
production and a democratic and egalitarian society but also to an alternative
way of life, a truly ecosocialist civilization beyond the imperium of money
with its consumption patterns artificially induced by advertising and its
limitless production of useless and/or environmentally harmful goods.
Some
environmentalists believe that the only alternative to productivism is to stop
growth as a whole, or to replace it with negative growth — called in France
“degrowth.” To do this, it is necessary to drastically reduce the excessive
level of consumption of the population and to give up individual houses,
central heating and washing machines, among other things, in order to reduce
energy consumption by half.
As these and other
similarly draconian austerity measures may be very unpopular, some advocates of
degrowth play with the idea of a kind of “ecological dictatorship.”[4] Against
such pessimistic points of view, some socialists display an optimism which
leads them to think that technical progress and the use of renewable energy
sources will allow unlimited growth and prosperity so that everyone receives
“according to their needs.”
It seems to me
that these two schools share a purely quantitative conception of “growth” — positive
or negative — and of the development of the productive forces. I think there is
a third posture that seems more appropriate to me: a real qualitative
transformation of development. This implies putting an end to the monstrous
waste of resources caused by capitalism, which is based on the large-scale
production of useless and/or harmful products. The arms industry is a good
example, as are all these “products” manufactured in the capitalist system —
with their planned obsolescence — which have no other purpose than to create
profits for big companies.
The question is
not “excessive consumption” in the abstract, but rather the dominant type of
consumption whose main characteristics are: ostensible property, massive waste,
obsessive accumulation of goods and the compulsive acquisition of
pseudo-novelties imposed by “fashion.” A new society would orient production
towards meeting authentic needs, starting with what could be described as
“biblical” — water, food, clothing and housing — but including essential
services: health, education, culture and transportation.
It is obvious
that the countries where these needs are far from being met, that is to say the
countries of the southern hemisphere, will have to “develop” much more — build
railways, hospitals, sewers and other infrastructures — than industrialized
countries, but this should be compatible with a production system based on
renewable energy and therefore not harmful to the environment.
These countries
will need to produce large quantities of food for their populations already hit
by famine, but — as the farmers’ movements organized at an international level
by the Via Campesina network have argued for years — this is an objective much
easier to reach through organic peasant farming organized by family units,
cooperatives or collective farms, than by the destructive and antisocial
methods of industrial agrobusiness with its intensive use of pesticides,
chemical substances and GMOs.
The present
system of odious debt and imperialist exploitation of the resources of the
South by the capitalist and industrialized countries would give way to a surge
of technical and economic support from the North to the South. There would be
no need — as some Puritan and ascetic ecologists seem to believe — to reduce, in
absolute terms, the standard of living of the European or North American
populations. These populations should simply get rid of useless products, those
which do not meet any real need and whose obsessive consumption is upheld by
the capitalist system. While reducing their consumption, they would redefine
the concept of standard of living to make way for a lifestyle that is actually
richer.
How to
distinguish authentic needs from artificial, false or simulated needs? The
advertising industry — which exerts its influence on needs through mental
manipulation — has penetrated into all spheres of human life in modern
capitalist societies. Everything is shaped according to its rules, not only
food and clothing, but also areas as diverse as sport, culture, religion and
politics. Advertising has invaded our streets, our mailboxes, our television
screens, our newspapers and our landscapes in an insidious, permanent and
aggressive manner.
This sector
contributes directly to conspicuous and compulsive consumption habits. In
addition, it leads to a phenomenal waste of oil, electricity, labour time,
paper and chemical substances, among other raw materials — all paid for by
consumers. It is a branch of “production” which is not only useless from the
human point of view, but which is also at odds with real social needs. While
advertising is an indispensable dimension in a capitalist market economy, it
would have no place in a society in transition to socialism. It would be
replaced by information on the products and services provided by consumer
associations.
The criterion
for distinguishing an authentic need from an artificial need would be its
permanence after the removal of advertising. It is clear that for some time the
past habits of consumption will persist because no one has the right to tell
people what they need. The change in consumption models is an historical
process and an educational challenge.
Certain
products, such as the private car, raise more complex problems. Passenger cars
are a public nuisance. Globally, they kill or maim hundreds of thousands of
people each year. They pollute the air in big cities — with harmful
consequences for the health of children and the elderly — and they contribute
considerably to climate change. However, the car satisfies real needs under the
current conditions of capitalism.
In European
cities where the authorities are concerned about the environment, some local
experiments — approved by the majority of the population — show that it is
possible to gradually limit the place of the private car in favour of buses and
trams. In a process of transition to ecosocialism, public transit would be
widespread and free — on land as well as underground — while paths would be
protected for pedestrians and cyclists.
Consequently,
the private car would play a much less important role than in bourgeois society
where the car has become a fetish product promoted by insistent and aggressive
advertising. The car is a symbol of prestige, a sign of identity (in the United
States, the driver’s license is the recognized identity card). It is at the
heart of personal, social and erotic life. In this transition to a new society,
it will be much easier to drastically reduce over-the-road transportation of
commodities — a source of tragic accidents and excessive pollution — and to
replace it with rail or container transport. Only the absurd logic of
capitalist “competitiveness” explains the present development of truck
transportation.
To these
proposals, the pessimists will answer: yes, but individuals are motivated by
infinite aspirations and desires which must be controlled, analyzed, suppressed
and even repressed if necessary. Democracy could then be subject to certain
restrictions. Yet ecosocialism is based on a reasonable assumption, previously
advanced by Marx: the predominance of “being” over “having” in a non-capitalist
society, that is to say the primacy of free time over the desire to own
countless objects: personal achievement through real activities, cultural,
sports, recreational, scientific, erotic, artistic and political.
The fetishism
of the commodity encourages compulsive buying through the ideology and
advertising specific to the capitalist system. There is no evidence that this
is part of “eternal human nature.” Ernest Mandel pointed out:
“The continual
accumulation of more and more goods (with declining ‘marginal utility’) is by
no means a universal or even predominant feature of human behaviour. The
development of talents and inclinations for their own sake; the protection of
health and life; care for children; the development of rich social relations as
a prerequisite of mental stability and happiness — all these become major
motivations once basic material needs have been satisfied.”[5]
As we mentioned
above, this does not mean, especially during the transition period, that
conflicts will be non-existent: between environmental protection needs and
social needs, between ecological obligations and the need to develop basic
infrastructures, especially in poor countries, between popular consumption
habits and lack of resources.
A society
without social classes is not a society without contradictions or conflicts.
These are inevitable: it will be the role of democratic planning, from an
ecosocialist perspective freed from the constraints of capital and profit, to
resolve them through open and pluralistic discussions leading society itself to
take decisions. Such a democracy, common and participative, is the only way,
not to avoid making errors, but to correct them through the social collectivity
itself.
To dream of a
green socialism or even, in the words of some, of a solar communism, and to
fight for this dream, does not mean that we are not trying to implement
concrete and urgent reforms. While we should not have illusions about “clean
capitalism,” we must nevertheless try to gain time and impose on the public
authorities some elementary changes: a general moratorium on genetically
modified organisms, a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, strict
regulation of industrial fishing and the use of pesticides as chemical
substances in agro-industrial production, a much greater development of public
transit, the gradual replacement of trucks by trains.
These urgent
eco-social demands can lead to a process of radicalization, provided that they
are not adapted to the requirements of “competitiveness.” According to the
logic of what Marxists call a “transitional program,” each small victory, each
partial advance immediately leads to a greater demand, to a more radical
objective. These struggles around concrete questions are important, not only
because partial victories are useful in themselves, but also because they
contribute to ecological and socialist awareness. Moreover, these victories promote
activity and self-organization from below: these are two necessary and decisive
pre-conditions for achieving a radical, that is to say revolutionary,
transformation of the world.
There will be
no radical transformation as long as the forces engaged in a radical, socialist
and ecological program are not hegemonic, in the sense understood by Antonio
Gramsci. In a sense, time is our ally, because we are working for the only
change capable of solving environmental problems, which are only getting worse
with threats — such as climate change — which are more and more close.
On the other
hand, time is running out, and in a few years — no one can say how much — the
damage could be irreversible. There is no reason for optimism: the power of the
current elites at the head of the system is immense, and the forces of radical
opposition are still modest. However, they are the only hope we have to put a
brake on the “destructive progress” of capitalism.
[1] Naomi
Klein, On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal (Random House, 2019), pp.
95, 98.
[2] Ernest
Mandel, Power and Money (Verso, London, 1992), p. 209.
[3] Mandel,
ibid., p. 204.
[4] The German
philosopher Hans Jonas (Le principe responsabilité, Éd. du Cerf, 1979) raised
the possibility of a “benevolent tyranny” to save nature, and the Finnish
ecofascist Pentti Linkola (Voisiko elämä voittaa, Helsinki, Tammi, 2004)
advocated a dictatorship capable of preventing any economic growth.
[5] Mandel,
ibid., p. 206.
Michael Löwy is
a Franco-Brazilian philosopher and sociologist, and emeritus research director
at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He is the author of
numerous books, including The War of the Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin
America and Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History.”
He is also a leading member of the Global Ecosocialist Network.
