This article is a response to Rick Greenblatt’s “Planetary Problems Require Planetary Solutions,” which is part of a Green Strategy Debate series.
With the emergence of large corporate enterprises during the nineteenth century it became apparent that these economic behemoths had widespread social impacts. Their business operations might affect millions of consumers and thousands of workers. Additionally, the presence of their factories or complexes could affect social and environmental well-being in dozens or hundreds of communities. On this basis the issue was raised that social impact of such magnitude argued for social ownership.
Capitalism, of course, is characterized by private ownership of productive assets. Consequence: Despite the enormous social significance of automobile production and deployment during the early part of the twentieth century, Henry Ford treated his Ford Motor Company as his private fiefdom. He personally-autocratically arrogated just about all of the decision making. This should be understood as nothing short of scandalous, as well as anti-social. Not only is this economic-productive paradigm undemocratic, it also has a tendency toward ecological irresponsibility in the pursuit of profit.
So leftists advocate for social ownership. There could be public (or collective) ownership of individual enterprises, of whole industries, or of the economy as a whole. Greens make a point of introducing the nuance of scale as a key factor—vide our principle: decentralization and the concept of “community-based.” I interpret this to mean that there should be recognition of the distinction between industrial-scale and communitarian-scale. And I believe experience shows that at an industrial scale, while socialization can conceivably be effectuated in such a way as to be more responsible and perhaps even more efficient, it can’t possibly achieve the leftist objective of democratic ownership and control—no less participatory planning as per Rick Greenblatt’s “Participatory and Representative Planning Model.”
Re: socialization of individual enterprises
Mondragon is an exemplar of collective-cooperative ownership of an individual industrial-scale enterprise. Mondragon is well known. If it was demonstrably superior there would be a clamor for emulation. Among leftists there is a good deal of interest and some advocacy, but beyond that milieu we don’t see much in the way of clamor for emulation. It appears that most workers aren’t particularly interested in spending time and effort in what’s touted as, but rarely experienced as, participatory-democratic decision making. People relate to industrial-scale enterprises as institutions. At that scale an institution doesn’t much feel like “mine.” Managerial cliques tend to emerge, and that has been the case with Mondragon.
Coops that have a pro-labor culture may provide a better working environment than the typical capitalist firm. “Better” is worthwhile, and is a basis for leftist support. But the cooperatives movement is no panacea. Richard Wolff has been trying to breathe life into his “Democracy at Work” project for several decades. I think he has illusions about the extent of appeal. Rather than self-managing industrial-paradigm labor, workers would prefer to be liberated from such. How? A distinctive dimension of a leftist transition “from Red to Green” could explicate how Community-based Economics could be the context for right-livelihood.
Re: socialization of whole industries
This has a considerable track-record. Many countries seem satisfied with socialization of rail transport, for example; some with air transport or energy production or healthcare provision. In any of those cases, if it were evident that socialization was more democratic and more efficient, we would expect to see the populace demanding the extension of such. But the superiority of socialization hasn’t been so clearcut, and for that reason we’ve observed a pattern in a number of countries whereby they try nationalization of some industries, then get complaints about bureaucratization and move toward de-nationalization when a more right-wing administration comes into office. There are even instances of cycles of nationalization, then de-nationalization, and then re-nationalization when a more left-wing administration comes into office! Nonetheless, with a chastened perspective, I do think that we should advocate for socialization of key industries as an element of our ecosocialist Green New Deal program.
Re: socialization of the economy as a whole
It could be argued that the only thing worse than concentration of wealth and power in the hands of private corporations is concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the monolithic state. Anyway, democratic centralized control of a complex industrial economy has proven to be a pipedream. I think that’s why planning schemas—as proposed by Rick Greenblatt or Robin Hahnel or Oskar Lange—have found no resonance.
Subjective economics and a participatory form of democracy will require de-industrialization. In fact, I think that when the Greens advocate ecosocialism it should be posited as a post-capitalist pathway toward degrowth and de-industrialization. At a bioregional scale there could be a variety of ways to achieve the social, economic, and ecological desiderata that are not achievable under industrial capitalism or industrial statism. De-industrialization itself will resolve some of the planetary problems we now face. Others can be addressed by representatives from the decentralized sovereignties.
