Socialism and Democracy

Socialism is defined as a system of society in which the means of production are commonly owned and democratically controlled by everyone.  But what exactly is meant by “democratic control” here?  Since socialism is a global society, how is democratic control to be exercised by the 7 billion or so people that currently constitute the world’s population? I think we need to seriously unpack this whole question and present a much more nuanced and – dare I say it – realistic account of how a socialist democracy would work in practice One of the many criticisms that are constantly thrown at socialists alludes to what is called the "complexity problem" which is associated with people like F A Hayek.  In a nutshell what Hayek was saying is that modern industrial society is far too complex for decisions to be concentrated in the hands of a single planning centre.  It is quite impossible for the literally millions upon millions of decisions that are being made every day about every aspect of modern production to be made by this single authority.  Of necessity, such decisions need to be decentralised and then coordinated through an impersonal market mechanism.  Hayek was right about the need for some degree of decentralisation but very wrong about the need for such decisions to be coordinated through a market.  There is an alternative mechanism of coordination that in fact operates side by side with the market mechanism even today – namely, a self-regulating system of stock control involving calculation-in-kind.  Socialism will simply get rid of the former but retain the later Central or society wide planning is also an attempt to coordinate decisions but in a non-decentralised fashion – obviously.  In theory, this can be done either democratically or not.  In practice, neither democratic society-wide planning nor undemocratic society-wide planning is remotely feasible and indeed of the two the former is even more unfeasible because the idea of having to consult the global population on a daily basis about the millions upon millions of decisions to be made every day is self-evidently ridiculous. Society-wide central planning, democratic or not, is a completely unworkable idea. It requires calculating in advance the ratios of millions of inputs and to millions of outputs via a calibrated system of "material balances",  Any given output requires certain inputs so to produce a certain production target for that output requires that the production targets for these inputs should be met.  A shortfall in the production of even one of these inputs will impact upon the output in question such that the target production of that output will not be met.  Since everything is interconnected in a modern production system even small departures from the central Plan will magnify in a cumulative fashion that will undermine the integrity of the whole plan – even assuming it could be put together in the first place I dont need to labour the point.  Society wide central planning is impossible not least because it is simply incapable of adjusting to the problem of real world changes.  But what is the alternative then?Here I think the principle of subsidiarity will come into play and should be a cornerstone of the socialist view of democracy – notwithstanding the origins of this concept in such a reactionary organisation as the Roman Catholic Church .  Subsidiarity has been defined as “ an organizing principle that matters ought t0o be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity A healthy democracy requires informed decision-making.  A local community in one part of the world is unlikely to be even aware of another local community on the other side of the world let alone the kind of issues that affect the latter.  Should it have a say in such issues or would this not be seen as a form of arrogant external interference in matters that don’t really concern it? This surely brings out a central point of a socialist democracy – that there are different scales of decision-making to which correspond different levels of spatial organisation in a socialist society – local regional and global.   It entirely depend on the nature of the decision to be made and its spatial significance for individuals This is one very important constraint on the extent of democratic decision-making in a socialist a society. There are others – such as how to balance the decisions made by individuals against decisions made by groups.  It is only in the sphere of group decisions that democracy has any relevance and there is a shifting boundary between group decisions and individual decisions which we need to take cognisance of.   For instance we would not want to argue that in a socialist society the group should determine what clothes we wear, what food we eat, what music we listen to and so on.  That would make socialism unbearably totalitarian and intolerant.  These things should quite properly should be left basically up to the individual to decide.  Not only that, it is quite impractical for such things to be decided on any other basis. Morevoer, I would argue that the very nature of a socialist society absolutely requires and insists upon this sphere of individual freedom.  As Marx put it in socialism the “free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.  Note the words. "condition of".  Marx is saying a free society depends on its individuals being substantially free to express their own individuality.  From each according to ability to each according to need is the very embodiment of this principle of free development. For instance, if we are not able to voluntarily choose what kind of work we would like to do then it follows that our labour is coerced not free.  Coerced labour is a characteristic of a class based society not a socialist society So, in summary, what I am arguing for is that we need to more proactively present a more nuanced picture of a socialist democracy as something that is  balanced or constrained by other considerations .  The more realistic or practical our model of socialist democracy the more likely is it to attract interest

I'm a Democratic Communist, whose concern is to use Marx to further the building of the democratic control of social production by the producers (ie., socialism).

---

And so, you hide your ideology

There are many importance issues that are not discussed in this forum. With Marx Epistemology workers are not going to stop paying their rent or mortgage, and they are not going to put food on their tables for their family, or to eliminate the causes of wars in this society. The thing about epistemology is like a rosary for the church of Marx, it is a repetition of the same ideas all the time, it is an endless cycle. We have discussed those ideas hundred of times, it is like hacking the forum toward a mono-thematic concept

I think that the principle of subsidarity is a reasonable one in a lot of cases. However, in some cases I think that it would be good for different areas to decide if the approval of something would affect them in an important way. A somewhat bad example would be if a town wants to build a nuclear power plant that is not just near the area of their town, but also near the area of another town. If a disaster happened, both towns could be negatively affected.On the issue of democratically deciding what clothers to wear, what music to listen to etc, I agree that this would be bad.However, if most people would want to decide stuff like that by voting, there wouldn't really be any way of stopping them other than convincing them, right? Not that I think there would be a big risk of that happening.