Many a socialist has posed the question of whether a comprehensive overview of the economy as a whole is possible at all. For the sake of convenience, we will refer to the question concerning the feasibility, modalities and limits of an overview of the economy as the overview problem (Übersichtsproblem).1 It unquestionably constitutes an important area of socialist theory. One of the goals of socialism is to replace the capitalist economy, which is governed by blind laws and is fundamentally resistant to overview, with a socialist economy that would be consciously constructed and foundationally subject to overview. ‘Scientific socialism’ directly owes its development, in part, to the insight that the progress of economic transparency is no mere pious wish, but represents a scientifically observable trend already in capitalism itself. It is, after all, well known that technical and economic concentration and centralization within capitalism lead to an increasing degree of uniformity of the economy as a whole, and through this to the transparency of the process of economic activity in certain important respects. This does not mean of course, that the overview problem will, one fine day, ‘solve itself’, without our active assistance. In creating a conscious overview of the economy, if anywhere, the thesis holds that an active understanding of the transformative process in which we are participants is part of the essence of this process itself. With respect to the Übersichtsproblem, socialist theory is therefore called on not to aim to construct the theory of the future socialist economy in a historical vacuum but to interpret concrete present realities in a socialist spirit and through this to steer them in a socialist direction. It is thus true even for the Ubersichtsproblem that its treatment by socialist theory is sensible and justified only to the degree to which its results prove to be fruitful in the praxis of the working-class movement. We must not lose sight of this as we approach the regrettably rather abstract question of the overview problem.
The matter appears, at first sight, to be quite simple. How is it possible to gain an overview of the economy as a whole? The conventional answer is: with the aid of perfected statistics. And if this does not take us far enough, then we are told that we will ‘organize the economy centrally and thereby make it susceptible to oversight’.
The apparent simplicity of this solution, which we shall call the administered economy model, soon disappears on closer examination. For in such an approach one speaks of what is overseen as the economy in general, as if the economy were a natural phenomenon, something like a landscape, which can readily be surveyed from an aeroplane. But the economy is not a natural phenomenon; rather, it is a social-natural process. Fearful of bogging down in the fetishistic approach of classical political economy, which treats the wealth of society as so many ‘commodities’, the administered economy approach easily falls into the false extreme of a crude naturalism, whereby the economy is conceived merely in terms of tangible objects, machines, raw materials, etc. But when socialists speak of the overview of the economy, we mean (or at least we should mean) the overview of the ultimate elements of the social-natural processes that constitute the economy. The elements of the economy are: (1) human needs; (2) the [subjective] hardships of human labour (menschliches Arbeitsleid);2 (3) means of production, i.e. minerals, tools and machines, available foodstuffs, raw materials and intermediate products and, finally, the most important means of production, labour power. The task of economic managers is the maximal satisfaction of needs, using the available means of production, with a minimum of labour hardship. Thus, the object of economic overview is in reality not ‘the economy in general’, conceived as a natural phenomenon observable from a bird's eye view, but rather the above mentioned elements, i.e. needs, labour hardship and the means of production. Of these three objects of overview, the administered economy approach concerns itself exclusively with physical and material things, i.e. the means of production, including labour power. We must ask: is this approach at all capable of encompassing the other two elements of the economy – human needs and labour hardship?
To pose this question inevitably leads us to a new aspect of the overview problem. It is obvious that the form of overview will be different according to its object and that object's circumstances. In fact, it is one thing to observe material objects of the external world (means of production such as labour power, factories, mines, arable land, etc.) and quite another to observe human psychological states (needs and the hardships of labour), and likewise internal psychological processes. Means of production are visible, tangible aspects of the external world, which are countable, measurable and externally ascertainable. The needs and hardships of another person, by contrast, we can only envision in some fashion, through mentally putting ourselves in his situation, through an empathetic experience of his needs and hardships, through entering into them within ourselves. This process of inner overview is, however, fundamentally different from the external form of overview relating to material objects and things. Of the three elements of the economy, only the means of production are accessible by means of external overview; the two other elements (needs and labour hardship) are subject to an essentially different kind of overview, which we have called inner overview. The answer to our previous question (whether the administered economy solution to the overview problem can also encompass needs and labour hardship) depends on whether the administered economy is capable not only of an external, but also of an inner overview of the economic elements.
Let us first see how theorists of the administered economy, whose attention is directed primarily at the overview of the material means of production, have dispensed with this problem. In so far as they regard the economy as no more than a technical-material process of production, their vision of the economy narrows, largely unremarked, to production; thus, needs and labour's hardships automatically slip into the background. As regards needs, for example, these are simply assumed to be known without difficulty. To be on the safe side, and to give to some extent a substitute for the neglected needs, actual consumption in a past period (for instance, the prior year) is offhandedly put in place of current needs. Needs and consumption are however two totally different things – as everybody whose actual consumption does not satisfy his needs knows perfectly well. Previous actual consumption would more closely correspond to present needs if, among other things, it had coincided with previous needs, and if needs had remained unchanged. To establish this, however, requires that needs be known first. If they are unknown, there is nothing to be done except to impose equality between needs and consumption by force, or more exactly to do so on paper, where the factually unknown needs are taken as authoritatively stipulated, standardized, and thus as ‘known’. This however is no solution at all, because in order to correctly stipulate, standardize, and record the extent to which the individual types of needs should be satisfied, it is first necessary to know what they are. The same is true of labour's hardships (Arbeitsleid und Arbeitsmühe), which are related to the quantity of work done. The economic manager has also to balance satisfaction of needs with the pain and effort of work. But the hardships of labour cannot be measured by work done, or by the wages paid, as theorists of the administered economy customarily seek to do. On the contrary, the appropriate work requirement and corresponding wage are in part a function of the effort and disagreeableness of the work to be done. Determining this requires knowledge of the [subjective] hardships of labour. Knowledge of hours of work done, production targets achieved or wages paid is no substitute for knowledge of the actual hardship endured by the worker. Thus, with respect to both human needs and labour's hardships, the theorist of the administered economy rests content with the mere appearance of a solution to the overview problem.
To return to our question: whether it is at all possible for the administered economy to achieve an inner overview of the economy depends on the means of overview available. We now turn to a brief examination of available means and their limitations.
One of the available tools is statistics. Statistics are, in fact, a general means to gain an exact overview of mass phenomena, in so far as they are quantifiable and took place in the past. Statistics are not, however, a magic solution because they can inform us only about enumerable and thus external realities, such as quantities of people, goods, acres, consumption figures and so on, and never about their present status, but only their past. Inner and qualitative phenomena in their present manifestation escape statistics. These, then, are the limits of statistics in providing an overview. Statistics are thus the classical means of the external overview of the economy.
Equally general in applicability, but of far greater significance, is a second means available to the economic administrator: organization. Everybody knows that when an industry, a sector or an army is organized, there is significant increase in ability to oversee. Organization achieves this in two distinct ways: first, information is generated for the leadership via reports of ‘lower’ levels to ‘higher’ ones; secondly, overview by the top leadership is obviated by the more limited but direct overview by the lower levels. In the latter case the leadership formulates its will based on the ‘reports’ of the lower ranks of the organization. The will thus formulated, which only needs to be kept at a general level, is correspondingly expanded and made concrete in the course of implementation by the lower ranks. In this fashion, each organization functions as an organ of overview, both by creating the capacity for overview, on the one hand, and by obviating overview on the other. Any organization is, thus, overview creating, and overview obviating. Important as these facts undoubtedly are for the solution of the overview problem, it is likewise clear that the provision of overview by the purely external organization of people in the economy (for it is always only people that can be organized, never ‘the economy’) is necessarily limited.
Unfortunately, we do not as yet have a theory of social organization with the help of which it would be easy to show that the overview effect of an organization is limited by its underlying principles. This is to be understood as follows: An organization constructed exclusively on the principles of power, such as an army of slaves, could not provide any overview to its leadership, which – if it does not wish to allow the human machine subject to it to operate blindly and haphazardly – would have to obtain the overview necessary for management in some other way (not via the organization itself). However, an organization built exclusively on legal principles (the principle of legal obligation), such as the civil service, is also limited in its provision of overview. No matter how magnificent its performance in certain areas, such as production, it must fail completely in others. Precisely the desired inner overview of the changes in human needs and the labour hardships of the people subordinated to the organization escape even the most bureaucratized apparatus. These, then, are the limits of overview achievable by the administered economy as customarily understood.
But the most prominent failure of the administered economy approach arises when the issue is encompassing the concrete reality of the working-class movement and the elements of the future that it embodies. Trade unions, industrial associations, cooperatives and socialist municipalities already provide overview at present, yet this is entirely overlooked by the theoreticians of the administered economy. Moreover, as we will show, all these formations are organs of the inner overview of the economy, with great significance for socialist development. The evolution of this overview can be illustrated by the example of the political party, before turning briefly to the economic overview already operating today within trade unions, cooperatives, industry associations and socialist municipalities.
Let us examine the situation of a democratically organized workers’ party during an acute political crisis, i.e. in the moment of its maximal effectiveness. The party leadership has a complete overview of the mood, determination, combat strength and capacity for action of the voters organized in the party. Hour by hour, the party leadership monitors the direction and intensity of all currents and undercurrents within the masses and reacts to them with the sensitivity of the most fine-tuned scientific instrument. Within such a party, the inner overview of the will and desires of broad strata of the electorate is constantly carried out. Alongside this nearly total leadership overview there exists, moreover, an impressive level of ‘membership overview’. Every member of a living and democratic party organization senses with particular precision whether the movement as a whole is losing or gaining strength, and the clarity of this overview depends almost exclusively on the democratic character of the party. This living inner overview, within the framework of the party organization, naturally serves to protect the political interests of the voters as fully as possible and to permit the leadership of the party to mobilize, for the benefit of all, each individual member's strength, determination and readiness for sacrifice.
The situation is quite similar with respect to the economic organizations of the working-class movement.
Let us examine, for example, a democratically constituted trade union on the eve of a decisive conflict with an employers’ association. At such a moment, both the leadership and membership have an exact overview of the currents and undercurrents within the union, and weigh their objectives and the means to reach them in precise relation to the available forces. Yet alongside this conscious overview of the conditions of struggle, there exists within the union another, almost unnoticed overview, directed elsewhere. The significance of this other overview is no longer tied to the existing capitalist order; on the contrary, it can only be fully revealed in socialism. Before a union in the above case is ready to declare itself ‘ready for action’, it must internally weigh, evaluate and recognize all the conflicting claims of its members. Conflicting assessments of labour by the members must, to a certain extent, be brought into balance. The enormous number of factors that affect wage levels – age, number of children, skill, danger, responsibility, infrequency of work, etc. – have to be brought into a just relationship. Should this by any chance be neglected, the union could fragment in the midst of the battle. This requirement is so obvious that it is generally not even necessary to emphasize it explicitly. It belongs to the normal life and activity of the trade union and takes place almost automatically. The fact that this process can readily take place is proof of the fact that, within the union, there exists a complete, living inner overview of the mutual assessments of work by the members. The trade union is thereby, already today, an organ of inner overview relating to the world of work, in so far as it directly enables overview by members and leaders of all forms of labour hardship. It is more than an organ fulfilling the oft-noted role of external overview of labour power as a means of production; it is also a means of inner overview of the completely distinct economic element of labour hardship. What in capitalism the labour market can only achieve mechanically and externally, via setting the price for labour power, is here organically put into effect via direct inner oversight – though still within the framework of the capitalist wage system.
Industry associations are likewise an instructive case. What is accomplished within a trade union with respect to an occupation or profession is here achieved with respect to an industry. An industry joins manual and intellectual workers, factory and office workers of various occupations. Each of these occupations performs a specific function within the industry. The workers’ industry association is only equipped to battle the employers, and likewise to monitor or perhaps to take over the industry, if it has a clear overview of the significance of each of its component occupations for the industry as a whole. Conclusions regarding this significance – that is, about the functional importance of each of the occupations – can obviously not be reached by a vote: here formal democracy in the sense of majority rule no longer has any justified validity. But within any healthy industry association, there exists a form of inner overview concerning the individual occupations’ balance of power in terms of their significance, that is, according to the importance of their function in the framework of an enterprise or the industry. This inner overview is much more than a nebulous feeling: it is the actual basis of the organization of the association. This inner overview of the functional significance of individual occupations within an enterprise or industry is obviously one of the most important elements of the future in the structure of the current working-class movement. For it forms one of the most essential preconditions of industrial self-management.
The case of a democratically organized consumer cooperative is similar. The leadership of a cooperative becomes an organ of inner overview of the needs of its members through daily direct contact with working-class women and local residents, who are simultaneously authorized as voting members to guide the cooperative's leadership via criticism. The resulting inner overview can be as intensive and comprehensive as that of the head of a family regarding the needs of the family members.
In different fashion, we find the same overview function in socialist municipalities. The inhabitants of a neighbourhood, who indicate the same common needs, with a leadership drawn from the same area, facilitate comprehensive overview of their needs as members of the municipality.
We thus can reach the conclusion that the existing formations of the working-class movement have great significance for the problem of overview. For all these formations have in common that via their organization, an essential economic element can be directly overseen within them.
These organizations of the working-class movement also have a second, very important common characteristic: they are not created by fiat according to some artificially conceived administrative model but are fundamentally the outcome of the independent activity of the workers and their advancing self-organization. It is to this development from the ‘inside outward’ that we must ascribe their provision of overview. The principle underlying these organizations is quite different from that which underlies the administered economy model. The principle underlying an organization, as we showed above, determines how, whether, and to what extent an organization is able to serve as an organ of overview. The principle which underlies the organizations of the working-class movement is not that of power, coercion or authority, nor is it abstract legal or bureaucratic principle (though neither of these can be lacking). Rather, it is first and foremost the principle of comradeship in the broadest sense of the word, the principle of relations among equals, of genuine self-organization (Selbstorganisierung). Our principal conclusion is that self-organization is an instrument for the achievement of inner overview over the specific aspect of life that provided motive and impulse for self-organization. Those who join with comrades to satisfy their needs through forming a consumer cooperative create thereby an organ of inner overview of the intensity and direction of the needs of its members. Those who join with others in an occupation or profession to defend their labour through forming a trade union create thereby an organ of inner overview of the intensity and direction of members’ assessments concerning the hardships of their various forms of labour. When workers belonging to different occupations or professions combine as members of an industry to create an industry association, this association becomes an organ of inner overview of the significance of each individual occupation within the industry, of the functional importance of each individual occupation for the whole of the industry in question. Whenever residents of a locality join with others for the satisfaction of their collective needs within the framework of a socialist municipality, they create an organ of inner overview of the intensity and direction of their collective needs as residents of the locality. The more lively and intensive individuals’ activity in these organizations, the more both the leadership and some of the members find available to them a precise and powerful overview of that portion of economic life from which the organization has sprung.
Can anything useful be derived from these insights for the praxis of the working-class movement? We can answer in the affirmative at least in one respect: insight into the essence of the overview problem offers some clear and simple criteria for judgements concerning certain important practical questions of organization. The correct form of organization generally emerges as a natural course of events in accordance with specific tasks and prevailing circumstances. Nonetheless, there is often a choice to be made between possible organizational models. Most often this leads to the fruitless question of which possible model we should favour as socialists. In such cases, we need only pose the question whether one or another possible form of organization can ensure better inner overview. The consolidation of organizations of distinct character, which advocates of the administered economy are so happy to propose, can only be regarded as progressive when the sacrifice of inner overview – which is almost always unavoidable – is more than compensated by other advantages. Not every new ‘organization’ represents organizational progress in a socialist sense. There are also erroneous organizations and one of the means to avoid them is by the test of transparency – i.e. the degree of their overview prevailing in them. Especially the advocates of the administered economy with their (doubtless well-intentioned) mania for the creation of new organizations all too often violate this test. Secondly, the practical organizer can gain a deeper understanding of the importance of democracy within the organizations of the working class, as these insights should clarify that their capacity to perform their overview function depends on the extent of vital democracy practised in their daily life. Thirdly, organizers will gradually learn to grasp that it is not sufficient for the leadership alone to acquire an overview; instead, the highest possible degree of overview for members, of members’ overview, must prevail in the organization. The realization of this requirement is known to be one of the most interesting and difficult tasks of the practising organizer. The leadership alone can naturally never cope with this task; each worker must likewise do his best for the organization. As to what the worker's participation should consist of, particularly in the organization's daily life, here the pursuit of maximal membership overview provides useful pointers to the practitioner. Only in this sense is it true, and indeed doubly true, that the road to socialism is an organizational problem.
These insights concerning the contributions of the trade unions, industry associations, cooperatives, socialist municipalities and the socialist parties to the achievement of overview are by no means irrelevant even for the higher goals of the working-class movement. Functional democracy, defined by Otto Bauer as ‘constant cooperation of those comrades representing the interests of the whole with those who perform a particular function in an individual profession’, is possible only if each individual has somehow become conscious of his particular function. Bauer is absolutely correct to state that the educational work required to reach this aim is the problem of socialist organization. As concerns the problem of raising individuals’ consciousness of their function, we therefore wish to emphasize just one more point: for all the questions of socialism, the thesis holds that any ‘consciousness’ can become reality only to the extent that some concrete content corresponds to it. For a consciousness without content, without object, without – in the case of a collectivity – overview does not exist. Consciousness of particular economic functions thus also requires, as its precondition, a properly directed overview of the elements of the economy. The provision of such an overview is one of the most important achievements of the most deeply rooted organizations of the working-class movement. It is in this regard that our contribution to the solution of the overview problem relates to the larger problem of functional democracy as a socialist form of life.