Page 160 - Culture Society and Economy

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ALTERNATIVES

would remain privately owned as would the bulk of professional and
personal services, food establishments and many retail entities. Both
public corporations and private firms would produce for exchange and
allocate resources – producer and consumer goods – through a market
exchange mechanism. If, therefore, the individual and society are to have
some control over these activities, a significant degree of central planning,
coordination and macroeconomic management will be essential. But this
would largely take the form of indicative and investment planning. In
other words, what is envisaged in a maximum program is a combination
of plan and market in which maximum efficiency is combined with social
justice goals. In this model, any re-allocation of investment funds to
regional and community banks in the sense proposed by Schweickart
would be avoided because of the dangers of inefficiency, duplication,
unemployment and macroeconomic instability which, based on the
Yugoslavian experience, these kinds of arrangements tend to produce. 19
That such a program poses serious challenges for the preservation and
expansion of democracy should be obvious. Worker self-management for
all public entities is one proposed solution to the lack of democracy but
experience in both Yugoslavia and at Mondragon has shown that this is
by no means unproblematic. Serious dangers of lack of innovation, high
unemployment, duplication of investment and oligarchic management
often develop hidden within the self-management framework. In addi-
20
tion, there is the huge problem of irresponsible monetary policy which
can have devastating inflationary, foreign trade and currency instability
consequences. It is probably more effective to rely on other means of public
oversight and scrutiny, including independent auditing, transparency,
anti-monopoly legislation and oversight, access to information, and a
well-defined system of incentives and penalties.
A most interesting but seldom discussed question is that of what is to
be done about the large transnational corporations which today dominate
the world economy. In any maximum plan of the kind being outlined here,
it is clear that the national operations of these large monopolies would
become public property. The key question, however, is what is envisaged
for their currently substantial transnational operations. One solution, pro-
posed by Schweickart, is for control (but not ownership) of the foreign
divisions of these firms to be turned over to the workers in the overseas
countries in which they operate. This way, net profit from local operations
would accrue to the workers at the various localities while, over time, full
ownership of these branch plants would be turned over to local workers. 21
No doubt some transnational corporations can be effectively dismantled
into national operations in this manner. But this is unlikely to be the case

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