When The Ship Comes In, Democracy Is Coming To The USA

Slightly revised transcript of the TestimonyPresentation by Michael Albert delivered at the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre,Brazil, 2002 

First, I want to thank the organizers of the WSF for havingme here to give a personal testimony, and for conceiving and organizing thismonumental event. 

I have been involved with gatherings of tens, hundreds, andeven a couple of thousand folks at a time – but this event, here in PortoAlegre, is truly extraordinary.

We all owe the organizers our thanks and continuing support– and for me, to be able to come here, meet so many wonderful people, learnfrom so many wonderful people, and even try to offer some useful comments to somany wonderful people is both humbling and inspiring.

So thank you.

When I was much younger I was powerfully moved by the wordsof Bob Dylan's songs – which still inspire me greatly. One song that I like inparticular is called When the Ship Comes In. It is a beautiful embodimentof the idea of winning a new world – our ship coming in.

More recently, I have grown to like the music of theCanadian activist poet, Leonard Cohen, and particularly a song called, DemocracyIs Coming to the USA. It too is about some of the implications of winning anew world.

And so, from these inspirational poet-activists I arrivedat a title for this testimony…

When the Ship Comes in, Democracy is Coming to the USA.

I first became political in the struggle against the War inVietnam. Very early in my awakening I remember going to a beautiful oldchurch…for a draft card turn in, in downtown Boston. I think it was perhaps1966. I was up in the balcony.

Students and others walked up to the pulpit and turned intheir military draft cards as an act of resistance. I applauded, from thebalcony, with many others.

When I was going home from that event, I had one of thosemoments that we all sometimes enjoy, a moment of clarification or insight. Irealized I had applauded people for doing something I could do, but something Iwasn't doing, and without having any compelling reason for not doing it.

Here was behavior I appreciated, and that I had nopersuasive reason to be avoiding, but yet which I wasn't engaging in. I decidedto transcend that situation in the future. I decided never to applaud as aspectator what I could myself do and had no very good reason for not doing. If Iadmire some action, I told myself, and if I can do it, and if I have no goodreason to not do it, if I have nothing morally better on my agenda – then Ishould do it.

It was a very simple realization. And thereafter I becamemuch more politically active.

In organizing on my campus not long thereafter, I rememberrepeatedly trying to elicit understanding and support for our anti-Vietnam warmovement, and repeatedly encountering a strange resistance.

I described the motives and suffering of the war, and wasasked in response:

"And what are you for?" "What goal wouldmake war go away?" "Why do you think fighting against the war makessense, given that war and all the associated horrors of our existence areinevitable?"

I thought the questions were absurd. They annoyed me. Theyseemed like avoidance, and I answered harshly.

We had to end the Vietnam War…I spoke, asserted, evenhollered…later there would be time for ending all war forever, for ending allthe horrors of our existence.

The fact that I and other anti-war organizers didn't havegood answers for how all of society should be restructured to eliminate thecauses of war and other pain was no excuse for not opposing the war, I felt.

I was technically right about that, of course, but as anactivist I now believe I was horribly wrong.

Showing that potential supporters' feelings and doubtsaren't warranted or are illogical was a second best approach. It wasn't nearlyas good as to respond positively, to offer a visionary answer that would addresspeople's doubts and lead forward, that would provide hope, that would givedirection, and that would address them on their own terms.

Over thirty years have passed since then.

If we were to create a stack of all the speeches and talksand conversations and books and essays about how capitalism hurts people thathave been offered in those thirty years – and if we were to create anotherstack of all the speeches and talks and conversations and books and essays aboutan alternative to capitalism and how it could benefit people that have beenoffered in those thirty years…the pile documenting misery would touch the sky,perhaps reach the moon, and the pile describing a superior option would barelyleave the ground.

The question what do we want still exists. People ask itall the time. And yet even after having given so much attention to what's wrong,and so little attention to what we want, we still continue to give this fair,urgent, and insightful question minimal attention.

I think that is a huge error.

I think our collective allocation of energies and insightbetween these two priorities, addressing what is wrong and its origins, on theone hand, and providing a vision of what we desire and its logic andimplications, on the other, needs to be overhauled. We need to do more of thelatter.

But why does answering the query "What do wewant?" matter so much that we should allot much more time and energy to it?

Imagine I were to deliver a brilliant, moving, compellingspeech about the ravages of old age. I enumerate how old age limits our options,oppresses us…and finally kills us. I document the pain and suffering,accurately, movingly. The facts are uncontestable. The reality is undeniablyhorrible. After all, aging limits everyone; it kills nearly everyone.

I finish this emotional and accurate talk and I say, okay,now join me in a movement against horrible, oppressive murderous old age.

Obviously no one joins me…in fact, everyone thinks I amcrazy. People rightly realize that to form a movement against the inevitable,against aging is literally insane. And people are aware, as well, that eloquentaccurate demonstrations of pain from aging have no bearing on their conclusionto ignore appeals to organize against aging. It is absurd to join a socialmovement against inevitable facts of life.

What we need to realize, certainly in the U.S.A., but Isuspect in most places, is that for the tens of millions of people we need tocommunicate with – the speeches, talks, rallies, classes, and books that weoffer about poverty, indignity, war, sexism, and racism, much less about wageslavery, sound precisely like speeches against aging.

They sound eloquent, they may induce tears and rage, but asto choosing our life path, they are beside the point.

People feel there is no alternative to a world in whichthese oppressive conditions predominate. They feel that fighting injustices islike fighting aging: it is useless. Even if we make gains they will be quicklywiped out by inevitable pressures reinstituting all the old rot.

And so people feel that our piling up descriptions of thepains induced by capitalism, the pains they most often know already from theirown experience, is mere whining…and certainly not constructive. The point is,unless people believe that something better is possible, explaining the harm ofcapitalism, of racism, of sexism, is to their ears like explaining the paincaused by aging: it is an annoying impediment to getting on with life.

And they tell us so. Get a life, they say to us in theU.S., for example.

Recently a computer broke down in the Z offices, which iswhere I work, and also where I live. A fellow came to do some repairs, a youngwhite man who owns his own small business. We talked about the bombing ofAfghanistan while he worked, and for another couple of hours after.

I argued that the motives of the U.S. response were todelegitimate international law, to maintain our credibility as a thug willing todestroy those who defy us, and to create a war on terrorism to justifyredistributing wealth upward to the rich, and draconian repressive measures forthe poor, below.

He had no trouble understanding all this, seeing andfeeling the horror of bombing a country with everything short of nuclear weaponseven at the possible cost of millions of human souls starved to death. But hesaid, Michael, you need to understand, me and people like me. We don't want tohear this. We don't want you to say this to us. To make us face it over andover.

And I said, "Rather like you wouldn't want me todetail the suffering of an earthquake?"

He said, exactly. It is inevitable. There is nothing I oranyone I know can do to change it. I need to protect my family and improve theirlives. What you want from me would waste my time. You are right about the facts,but it is only painful to my ears. I can't affect it. No one can affect it.  

For this young computer repairperson and millions uponmillions like him, like for the students I was trying to reach thirty years ago,only now much more so, a powerful impediment to becoming politically active isdoubt that any better outcomes can be attained or maintained.

To build really large movements we therefore need vision.

• We need vision to combat cynicism and doubt

• We need vision to combat the idea that there is no alternative

• We need vision to provide hope that sustains commitment, even for ourselves.

• We need vision that conveys a positive and inspiring approach rather than making us sound like whiners and naysayers to people's ears.

And we need vision to know where we want to go so that ourefforts will advance our aspirations rather than leading only in circles, oreven worse, leading toward ends we abhor, as has happened often in the past.

So, today, after this overly long motivationalintroduction, I want to talk about a vision, at least for economics, that Ipersonally advocate.

This new vision is called… Participatory Economics orParecon for short. And Parecon is built around Five Central Values, by which Imean, Parecon as an economy is literally conceived and designed to fulfill thosevalues that we hold dear. So what are they?
 

The First Value is uncontroversial…Solidarity

Any economy inevitably impacts relations among people. Whatimpact do we want it to have?

Surely not to make people anti-social and contrary to oneanother. Not to cause people to have to ignore or violate each other's humanityto survive or prosper.

The value we hold dear, instead, is solidarity.

We want the economy to cause people to be concerned for oneanother, to look out for one another's well being, to advance by virtue ofcollective benefit and not by way of exploiting or ignoring the plight ofothers.

So who would disagree that, other things being equal, aneconomy that produces more solidarity is better than one that produces less. Idon't think anyone would, and so we have our first value, Solidarity. 

The second value is also uncontroversial…Diversity.

Economies affect the range of options available to us. Wevalue having more options over having fewer options for the choice that morediversity gives us, and because we can benefit vicariously from the experiencesof others who make diverse choices, and because diversity insures against ourputting all our hopes on single scenarios without other possible avenues beingexplored and available if we need to change our choice.

So who would disagree that other things equal an economythat offers more diversity is better than one that offers less, far better thanone that homogenizes outcomes thereby eliminating variety?

I don't think anyone would disagree about that, andcertainly not anyone here at the WSF, and so we have our second value,Diversity.

The Third Value, Equity, is more controversial, perhapseven among us.

Economies impact the distribution of income and wealth.What do we want an economy to do in this respect, if we are to deem it worthy?How much should we all get?

Various norms are possible.

Remuneration could be for property. If you have a deed inyour pocket that says you own machines, equipment, land – and productivecapital – you get to receive as income the profits those means of productiongenerate. But of course, we all reject that norm for remuneration on the groundsthat allowing an owner like Bill Gates to have more wealth than the entirepopulation of Norway is not just immoral, it is vile, it is uncivilized, it isbarbaric.

Remuneration could instead be for power. You get what you can take – the morepower you have, the more you get. But we reject that remunerative norm ongrounds that having a society built on the ethics of Genghis Khan, or of theMafia, or of the Harvard Business School, is likewise immoral and barbaric.

Third, remuneration could be for output…and this is moresubtle. Indeed, why wouldn't it be right to reward each participant with theamount that they by their work give to the economy?

The answer is because the amount that Sally adds to theeconomic output of society depends, in part, on many factors that have norelation to Sally's choices or actions. It depends on how much society valuesSally's product, on how productive her workmates and tools are, on her innatetalents and capacities – over which Sally has no control and which she wassimply bequeathed.

Milton Friedman, the right-wing Noble Economist, onceconfronted a bunch of leftists about their views. He said, you leftists rejectthat someone should by virtue of being born to a capitalist parent, be born witha silver spoon, be born with huge advantages, be born rounding third baseheading for home, with no catcher there to tag him out – as compared to theworking class youth born at bat, against an awesome pitcher, already with twostrikes, and wearing a blindfold…

But Friedman added, okay, but if we shouldn't benefit fromthe luck of being born to rich parents – why should we benefit from the luckof being born with good genes? Why should Mozart be paid more than Salieri? Whyshould Michael Jordan be paid more than a yeoman ballplayer?

Friedman thought he had given a reductio ad absurdumargument against rejecting lucky conditions as a factor for remuneration.

I think, instead, that Friedman's example wasn't absurd atall, and that the left ought to agree that there should be no remunerationbenefits for property inheritance, and also no remuneration benefits forgenetic inheritance.

Finally, remuneration could be for effort. We reward peoplefor the effort they expend and the hardship they endure at work.

Two people go to the fields to cut sugar cane. Suppose theyboth work the same length of time, with the same conditions, and the sameeffort. Should they get the same pay? One is much larger. Should we reward thelarger person more income because at the end of the day her pile is larger thanthat of the smaller person?

What if one has a better set of tools? Or what if one worksin a cane field that is easier to cut or with more cane per area? Do suchdifferences warrant one cutter receiving more income than the other?

We want an economy to elicit more productive conditions andactivity, to be sure, but to attain that end, we needn't reward peopleimmorally, giving Billy more than Barbara because of size, or innate talent, ortools, though Billy and Barbara work the same length of time with the sameeffort and hardship.

Two people create mathematics or art, or produce bicyclesor jet engines… one is more creative, is quicker, has better tools, or isproducing something more valued. But they work at the same rate, in similarconditions, with the same effort. Should one get more pay than the other?

Friedman is right, there is no moral reason to remunerateoutput. And there is also no economic reason – higher pay can't get anindividual to have better genes…nor is it the best way to elicit appropriateapplication of talents or tools.

Rewarding effort provides an appropriate incentive to workhard. It gives us more if we exert more. And the morality is right…we arerewarded for what we endure, what we do, not for luck or circumstance.

And so we have a third value, Equity.

For our fourth value, Economies also impact decisionmaking relations. I call the associated value that needs to be propelled by agood economy "self-management."

The idea is simple. Imagine a worker among many others whowants to put a picture of her family in her workplace unit. Who should make thatdecision? She should, unilaterally.

Suppose she instead wants to put a loud radio in herworkstation, blaring forth music. Who should make that decision? Certainly nother alone. Her neighboring workmates should have a say.

And just that quickly we have our norm. Economic actorsshould influence decisions in proportion as the decisions impact them.

Sometimes a decision should be unilateral – evendictatorial. It isn't that the boss should decide dictatorially when I go to thebathroom, as now – but that I should decide that, myself. Othertimes one person one vote, majority rule makes most sense. Or sometimesconsensus makes most sense, or other procedures.

The specific methodology is not universal. But the goal weare trying to accomplish with our choice of voting procedures is alwaysself-management -- we should impact decisions in proportion as we are affectedby them.