Outline of CHAPTER 5... Worksites, Corporations, Institutions Introduction Work, Relationships, and Human Purpose Jobs, Work, and Leisure Expert Knowledge The Flow of Work Extensions of Democracy Organizational Democracy Technology, Jobs, and the Worker Autonomous Worker Cooperatives Categories and Communities

Chapter Five Worksites, Corporations, Institutions I want to die a slave to principles, not to men. Emiliano Zapata Introduction We live a significant portion of our lives while we work, and the nature of human work is changing more rapidly now than at any time in human history. In the 21st century our work patterns may change even more rapidly, but work and the workplace will always be important determinants of the quality of human life, of our democracies, and of our natural environment. Up to now we have discussed new models for the individual, organization, community, human purpose, and the evolution of democratic process. In this chapter we shall explore some of the implications of these models for work and work relationships. Consistent with our new models, we shall regard the primary purpose of work as being the preservation, reproduction, and creative evolution of human beings. Work, Relationships, and Human Purpose We begin our brief analysis of work and economic organizations with reference to the "bad man" of modern economics, Karl Marx, whose writing has been misunderstood and successfully distorted by his followers as well as by his enemies. In the third volume of Capital Marx sums up concisely what he meant by "capital": "...capital is not a thing but rather a definite social production relation...It is the means of production monopolized by a certain section of society, confronting living labour-power as products and working conditions rendered independent of this very labour-power..." [Marx, 1894/1967] [Capital, Vol. III, p. 815-20] In modern terms, the essence of "capital" is that it is a relationship of control by which owners of production facilities hire, use, and often abuse workers without an adequate respect for their whole being. The worker is a factor: at worst a troublesome but necessary nuisance, at best simply a means to achieving the ends sought by the owners. In the capitalist system, the explicit purpose of ownership is to make a profit: preserving or enhancing life is secondary. The consequences of this relationship and its concomitant value system ripple throughout the rest of society, distorting our educational systems, our mass media content, our political process, and our international system of militarily defended sovereignties. The relations of production do not, however, determine the organization of everything else in the world. Marx also meant the term "capital" to be used in relation to a specific stage of history, and of course, there are other connotations and elements to his definition of capital. The principle idea, however, remains that of a relationship in which persons are used as if objects--or as means to an end--by other persons. In Martin Buber's terms, capital is an "I-It" rather than "I-Thou" relationship. [Buber, 1958] Using words similar to those used by Marx, Buber further clarified the ultimate nature of the relationships in question: "Primary words [e.g., I-Thou, I-It]" he wrote, "do not signify things, but they intimate relations." [italics mine] And further: "I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being....I-It can never be spoken with the whole being." [italics mine] In our new models of work, production, and economic exchange relations, we shall seek primarily to transform the capitalist "I-It" relationship into a syntropic "I-Thou" relationship. Throughout the capitalist period notable thinkers have been commenting on that type of economic relationship in which human values are subordinated to materialistic values as people increasingly think in terms of using each other to make a profit. In the period of early capitalism, but still reflective of earlier values, William Shakespeare, who with his grace and wit so often has the last word, had an opportunity to introduce one of the first words on the subject of human values and their distortion by the relationships of "capital": "...that same purpose-changer, that sly devil, That daily break-vow, he that wins of all... Commodity, the bias of the world, The world, who of itself is peised well, Made to run even upon even ground, Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias, This sway of motion, this Commodity, Makes it take head from all indifferency, From all direction, purpose, course, intent: ...this same bias, this Commodity, This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word..." [King John, Act II, Scene I] During the capitalist period, the "purpose-changing" relationships into which most of us enter when we step into the work environment are nearly impossible to avoid. Even where an individual is employed directly by a "democratic" government which claims to be "of, by, and for the people" there is frequently a "means-ends reversal" (a sly purpose-change). A department which was organized as a means toward the end of serving the people evolves into an agency that exists primarily to serve its own employees while the public becomes a mere means to justify that end. Authoritarian, hierarchical organization tends to exacerbate the means-ends reversal. An innocent worker who enters such a department will soon find in the management a noticeable lack of sensitivity to both the worker and to those members of the electorate who are unfortunate enough to be "served" by the alienated staff. The capitalist relationship and its concomitant value system, however, will continue to be characteristic of our stage of history for some time. Our understanding of this period, however, is best achieved by including other cause-effect processes as well as perspectives from the preceding and the following stages. Both economic and psychological factors contribute to the development of hierarchy in the workplace. The hierarchy offers a ladder by which an individual can gain comparative status and wealth--the pursuit of which tends to displace community values. Our "late capitalist" societies, even more than the "early capitalist" society of Elizabethan England, are pervaded by the bias of "capitalistic" relationship--individuals striving to control, exploit, or gain advantage over others. The tendency persists in many forms. The charismatic personality, the royal or religious authority, the political dictator, and the capitalist owner are all different words for a similar phenomenon: a human individual consciously or unconsciously striving to be in a position to control and exploit others for personal pleasure or profit. Ruth Benedict [Benedict, 1959], in her book Patterns of Culture, described the paranoid style of social relations that develops when hierarchy establishes the affective tone of society. Here are a few passages that both caricature capitalist society and reveal its underlying nature: "Manipulation of wealth in this culture had gone far beyond any realistic transcription of economic needs and the filling of those needs. It involved ideas of capital, of interest, and of conspicuous waste...possessions were the currency of a complex monetary system which operated through the collection of extraordinary rates of interest. One hundred per cent interest was usual for a year's loan...The manipulation of wealth...is clearly enough in many ways a parody on our own economic arrangements. These tribes did not use wealth to get for themselves an equivalent value in economic goods, but as counters of fixed value in a game they played to win...The object of all...enterprise was to show oneself superior to one's rivals. This will to superiority they exhibited in the most uninhibited fashion. It found expression in uncensored self-glorification and ridicule of all comers. Judged by the standards of other cultures the speeches of their chiefs at their potlatches are unabashed megalomania... "I am the great chief who makes people ashamed. "I am the great chief who makes people ashamed. "Our chief brings shame to the faces. "Our chief brings jealousy to the faces. "Our chief makes people cover their faces by what he is continually doing in this world... "In religious ceremonies the final thing they strove for was ecstasy...The chief dancer, at least at the high point of his performance, should lose normal control of himself and be rapt into another state of existence. He should froth at the mouth, tremble violently and abnormally, do deeds which would be terrible in a normal state...Their dance songs celebrated this madness as a supernatural portent: "The gift of the spirit that destroys man's reason, "O real supernatural friend, is making people afraid. "The gift of the spirit that destroys man's reason, "O real supernatural friend, scatters the people who are in the house..." In the hierarchical relationships of the modern firm, too, anger and fear are common underlying affects--though every effort may be made to hide them. When employees are angry or suspicious of one another, it "scatters the people who are in the house." They do not work together well. Productivity and quality of work deteriorates as a result. It is because of such factors that we recognize the importance of introducing emotional and cognitive factors into our models of the individual, the workplace, and of other new institutions that we seek to build as part of the drive toward higher levels of democracy. Transcending this type of relationship requires the incorporation into economic, social, and cultural spheres of democracy, a balance of emotions that favors love, and a clear sense of purpose. Democracy and love, our answer to authority and fear with anger, are two very different but still complementary aspects of the same process, and the complementarity of organizational patterns and affective states ought to be explicitly addressed. The challenge is to find a way to describe each in terms that are mutually compatible and, at the same time, acceptable to the scientifically trained ear. Perhaps the best way to accomplish this is in terms of value: (1) We can think of democracy as the rational process by which nonviolent decision-making is distributed among persons of equal value according to a social contract. (2) Love, on the other hand, is a biomystical process which can replace the "magic" of power, group pressure, charismatic force, and other non-rational manifestations of authority--retaining for democracy, and for freely-willed interactions among equals, many of the qualities of mystery and "magic" in life. We can define love in behavioral terms, however, if we accept Singer's definition of love as both the appraisal and bestowal of value. We can then talk about love in the marketplace and in the political arena using terms that sound less strange to the modern ear. If in a modern democracy each person is of equal value before the law, and if in our daily activities we appraise one another and find value, that would not only be consistent with the democratic process but a necessary condition for participation in democratic decision-making. If, in addition, we bestow value upon one another by treating one another with sensitivity, respect, and constructive support, then we would be raising one another's value in a way that promotes self-confidence, productivity, and creativity. Without those qualities which make love operational in the cultural background, modern, secular government can become a dry and dangerous thing. Severed from biological roots, through means not unlike those by which religions place supernatural values higher than life itself, secular bureaucracies reserve for themselves a potential to destroy life on earth in order to "save" the government. Democracy and love seem to respond by paraphrasing a biblical injunction that says to each human being: "Thou shalt have no other god before thee and us." A stronger desire to live, and with it a fuller development of personality, a more willing contribution to life from each person, and a greater intelligence throughout the whole society, is approximated through love and democracy than through any other associative pair of affect and political process. Once implemented, the stage is then set for an advance to the next level of democratic organization, for example, to the dialectical or whole systems paradigm. In every society, however, our most basic material needs are met through work and exchange relationships. If we are to form all of the necessary, core structures of our new "whole world" democracy we must democratize, and introduce mutual valuing to, the work and exchange relationships. Democracy, working relationship, work itself, economic exchange, life, love, and play are, or should be, sacred to human beings and being sacred, how they are done must be thought about. When we think, sleep, or pray we are engaged in essentially solitary activities for the quality of which each of us alone is responsible. We can do them without immediate human interaction, but when we work, love, play, or make social decisions we soon know that things are complicated by intercourse with other, complicated and sometimes difficult, human beings. Through play we join with others to escape the rigor mortis of daily life and loosen the rigid patterns that fix our brains. In love we reproduce one another in mind and body, and we add romance to our dreams. Through work we join with one another to transform the material universe, the meaning of, and the future of the human race. In democratically organized work we achieve higher levels of productivity, choice, intelligence, and human spirit. We cannot approach the future of work, any less than we approach the future of democracy, without mixing normative and objective elements. In the worst case these two sets of considerations will produce images of the future that remain difficult to distinguish, as J. D. Bernal suggested in this classy, opening line to his book on the future: "There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them." [Bernal, 1935] Democracy, I will argue, is the framework within which we should and, in the future, will enter the workplace to join our desires with consciously purposeful and creative efforts to transform "fate." By bringing democracy into the worksite we can ensure that each of us is a conscious, willing, and creative participant, "that each of us dreams a part of [the world, and] that each of our dreams, opening ahead of us, hollows out a little more of the Universe, until a network of paths radiates among the stars..." [from The Roshi's Reply, Marcus] Every pre-democratic, "polyarchic," [Dahl, 1989] and democratic society will be well served by an extension of democratic processes into the work environment. Many worksites, corporations, and other organizations presently operate like small fiefdoms with owners, managers, and sometimes even union leaders assuming near dictatorial powers. The stressful and unpleasant nature of such working conditions reduces economic productivity and takes an unnecessary toll on the life of working people. Jobs, Work, and Leisure Jobs that disappear and turn up in other parts of the globe, physical work that becomes increasingly mental, and leisure time that transforms play into creative activity: these are all part of the working magic in our future. Jobs, we should remember, are social artifacts, while work and leisure time are universally present--albeit in different degrees. Jobs can be created and taken away by social choice, but work and leisure will always, in some measure, be present in our lives. Because of uneven development, different societies produce a given quantity and quality of goods at a different cost. Similarly, those goods produced can fetch a higher return on investment in some societies than in others. Under the present international system the owners of capital naturally choose, when they can afford the transportation and setup costs, to produce goods in countries where it is cheaper for them to do so and then to move those goods to a different country in order to sell them where the profits are higher. The results are manifold: enormous profits for those who already own large amounts of capital, cheaper goods for most people, dislocation of workers as corporations come and go, more jobs for people in the poorest countries, fewer jobs in rich countries, more machines with which management can replace workers; more homelessness, more broken families, more crime, more drug abuse, reduced funds for schools and libraries, more damage to the ecosystem as people try to squeeze from it everything they can; and more breakdown of social structure which, if not replaced or compensated by new structures, leads to a cancerous form of social breakdown which spreads. With an increasing global population, decreasing natural resources, and rising productivity in the workplace, the question exists: How long will a diminishing percentage of the population be able to feed, clothe, and shelter the expanding population of people who have nothing purposeful to do? Or can we make social choices that will produce jobs, control the population explosion, conserve and restore nature, and provide social services without sacrificing human values and regressing to totalitarian government? Expert Knowledge The problems of how, and how much, democracy to bring into our working relationships are essentially the same as the problems that all democracies face with regard to "expert knowledge." Exactly what relationship of control should exist between democratic decision-making and decision-making by experts, authorities, or controlling personalities? The ideal situation, of course, would be one in which everyone involved is an expert--and therefore, an equal. Before dismissing this possibility as entirely implausible, consider the following passages describing interactions in an organization of highly educated "experts," health care professionals, who were confronted with new information about the effect of smoking on human health: "The most interesting aspect of this rite of passage...was that it confirmed a fundamental shift in attitude away from the older, authoritarian view...if all the [staff members] were of equal status and prestige, how could they impose their authoritative will and suggestions on one another.? Authoritative suggestions can only work when there is a hierarchy of command; [they are] simply not effective in a democracy where all are equal. [italics mine] Instead, the...members could be interested in how their own unconscious minds would facilitate individual approaches to [the challenge]. Each...member could be interested in each other member's approach. This interest, together with the question of how each would do it--what particular shifts in mental orientation would be created--tended to focus attention and suspend or depotentiate usual conscious attitudes. Inner searches could then be initiated, leading to everyone finding their own unique ways to [meet the challenge]. Thus it could be speculated that the initial conditions of the microdynamics of trance and suggestion were operative within the entire group, facilitating the [changes] via a form of creative group hypnosis. "One wonders if this could be a model of how group change can take place in a democratic setting: each group member facilitates the process by questioning and wondering how his or her own unconscious [mind] will respond to the needs of the situation for change, rather than attempting to impose one person's will over another for change. [italics mine] It appears that some religiously oriented groups (i.e., the Quakers in the West, and various Zen and meditation-oriented groups of the East) have hit upon this same approach from very different premises. Note how very different this creative-receptive approach is from other current "democratic" styles of so-called debate, legalistic authoritative judgment, and power politics. In actual practice groups with democratic ideals fall into a wide range of effectiveness. At their best they have a receptive-creative relation to change and the new that is continually evolving by itself in a natural manner. At their worst they fall prey to mutually manipulative relationships wherein each individual or faction tries to impose its own limited world view on the other. It appears at this point in history that the proper focus of study for mankind is to learn to recognize and facilitate the conditions of the more desirable of these polar opposites in democratic institutions. In this area there is much fertile soil for the creative extension of Ericksonian psychotherapeutic and hypnotherapeutic approaches to these larger sociocultural contexts." [Rossi, 1985] The 21st century will bring improved education in democratic processes and in personal mental hygiene, but of course, we are not all likely to become professional hypnotherapists! Nevertheless, we may well learn from the attitude of respect for each individual's mental skills that was described in the above passage. The ongoing universalization of autonomous human personalities, described in chapter two, will include learning a great deal more about our own mental abilities and the "receptive-creative relation to change and the new." Howard Gardner has recently discussed the relationships among general IQ, educational systems, and the contributions of genius: "The interesting thing about the seven people whom I studied in my book Creating Minds [Gardner, 1993] is that none of them was a prodigy except for Picasso, and in fact, most of them were not terribly good in school. Even Einstein had a lot of trouble in school. The best student in school was actually Freud. Freud was an excellent student, but Picasso was a terrible student. Stravinski hated school; Einstein hated school, and whether they would have had a high IQ...My guess is that they would have had a perfectly acceptable IQ, but except for Freud and maybe Einstein and [T.S.] Eliot, Einstein more in terms of math, Eliot in terms of language, I think the other peoples' IQ would have been unremarkable. And I don't think anybody, except for people who belong to Mensa, believe that having a high IQ is a really important factor in making a contribution to society. Having one that's reasonable is, but of course millions and millions of people have reasonable IQs and probably everybody could have it, except people who are grossly disturbed, if we had a better educational system.[NPR (Monitor Radio) interview, broadcast on 7/18/93] A good, universalized educational system coupled with a global, nonprofit mass media [Adoni, 1984] that utilizes one, easy to learn, politically neutral, world language like Esperanto could facilitate the universalization of basic, cognitive, problem-solving skills and of a common world view with a minimum set of shared values. With substantial progress toward this goal the "problem" of expert knowledge would be much less acute. Nearly everyone would have a good general knowledge, an understanding of individual decision-making and democratic decision-making, a similar knowledge base, similar values, and therefore, would more easily arrive at common agreement or would more easily accept democratically achieved decisions even if they differ from one's personal or affinity group preferences. As general knowledge expands, however, expert knowledge will be increasingly necessary in many areas of work. When sophisticated technological devices proliferate, so will the need for understanding, operating, and repairing them. As more is learned about the chemistry, physics, physiology, economics, mathematics, electronics, cybernetics, and of the social and environmental sciences of the systems around us, more specialists will be needed to inform democratic systems of their options. The point to keep before one's mind is that expert knowledge can serve democracy while democracy serves humanity. M. Granger Morgan, an engineer who chairs the department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, spelled out the links among experts, human values, and democratic process in a Scientific American article on "risk analysis and management": "My experience and that of my colleagues indicate that the public can be very sensible about risk when companies, regulators and other institutions give it the opportunity. Lay people have different, broader definitions of risk, which in important respects can be more rational than the narrow ones used by experts. Furthermore, risk management is, fundamentally, a question of values. In a democratic society, there is no acceptable way to make these choices without involving the citizens who will be affected by them." [Morgan, 1993] Decisions can be assigned (1) to experts by democratically elected bodies, (2) to elected representatives who must first consult with experts, or by various other means decisions can be made by mixing input from experts and the popular will. Different types of situation require different approaches. As an example of the first type of relationship, a cardiovascular surgeon can be told by the patient not to perform certain procedures but to perform others according to the professional discretion of the surgeon. The operating team, moreover, consists of individuals each with very specialized training who presumably would stop the surgery if the surgeon began to hallucinate, yet under normal conditions no one would expect them to "vote" on whether to move the surgical blade this way or that way. The surgeon is expected to make that decision based on her or his expert judgment and experience. Such decisions are thus delegated, with constraints, to the surgeon by consent of all those, including the patient, who are involved. Yet if a member of the surgical team noticed something amiss, either within his or her sphere of function or without, everyone would want and expect that person to speak out. "Speaking out" while at work or play is a usually informal method of "voting," i.e., of contributing one's input to a collective decision. Some degree of democracy exists when everyone is eligible to speak out, and the expertise present in this example would clearly be enhanced to the benefit of all--especially of the patient--if everyone involved could contribute, in an orderly way, to the accomplishment of the goals. Experts, who by definition have unusual knowledge and skills in a narrow field, must always apply their expertise in service to the goals and values of a larger community, and they must ultimately be accountable to the larger, democratically ruled, community. They learn and practice their arcane arts in accordance with the rules of the democratic community. In brief, genius may serve democracy but democracy remains sovereign to genius, lest self-appointed genius rule us all. The Flow of Work As world population increases and natural resources decrease, productivity in the workplace will most likely continue to increase--until or unless socioeconomic structures begin to collapse. Efficiencies in the workplace will have to be complemented by conservation and efficiencies in all aspects of life that are reciprocally supportive of work--especially in the field of education. Long before people set foot on the path to their worksites, they will have trained, practiced, or studied in order to develop the skills necessary to do their work well. Education and preparation for work will be a subject of increasing importance for society. Four other categories of preparation and support are relevant to a work-centered life: social support, housing, transportation, and health. In the future, each of these will most likely be provided to individuals and families within the context of small communities that are supported by large systems. These larger social structures, themselves based on the concepts of organizational and syntropic democracy, will be specifically designed to achieve economies of scale while keeping controls decentralized. Work itself will flow out of the traditional workplace and into educational institutions, the home, transportation systems, waiting rooms, and even into recreation areas where facilities will make it possible to work an hour or two for a little extra spending money. Those more autonomous or "syntropic" personalities capable of purposeful action simultaneously at several levels of organization, will be able to integrate travel, study, vacation, and work all in the same day. Regarding the social support processes that are essential to the psychological health of each working individual, I expect that new and more fluid forms of community support will evolve. Within these communities, which themselves will be more autonomous and purposeful at several levels, individuals will share specifically defined sets of goals and values and will support one another in the preservation and enhancement of those values. Such communities will not only serve the values and purposes specific to their unique constitutions but will also more efficiently provide a social and material context for the development and maintenance of healthier personalities. The support that people find in these communities will help them enter the work environment as more productive personalities. As we progress through the 21st century it is almost unthinkable that we would continue to ignore the developing integration of modern cognitive science and ancient meditative practice as we develop our educational curricula. People will become versatile in identifying and altering their own mind-states in order to cope more effectively with a variety of circumstances at work as well as in all other spheres of daily life. They will begin learning at a much earlier age how to experience work as "flow." I am using the term "flow" here essentially as it is described by Csikszentmihalyi [Csikszentmihalyi, 1993]: (p.176)"...the joy of creativity...concentration, absorption, deep involvement, joy, a sense of accomplishment--are what people describe as the best moments in their lives. They can occur almost anywhere, at any time, provided one is using psychic energy in a harmonious pattern. It is typically present when one is singing or dancing, engaged in religious ritual or in sports, when one is engrossed in reading a good book or watching a great performance. It is what the lover feels talking to her beloved, the sculptor chiseling marble, the scientist engrossed in her experiment. I have called these feelings flow experiences, because many respondents in our studies have said that during these memorable moments they were acting spontaneously, as if carried away by the tides of a current." "Flow can occur in almost any activity..." (p.194) "...we found that those workers whose frequency of reported flow experience was above average were in general happier and more motivated, especially when working. They also worked half an hour a day more on the job (as opposed to daydreaming, doing their shopping lists, or talking on the phone about personal matters) than their peers who reported less flow. Half an hour a day adds up to about fifteen extra working days per year, or three extra weeks of work each year per worker. This, multiplied by the millions of workers in the United States, would make quite a difference in the GNP, as any economist would readily admit." Anyone can begin to create more "flow" in her or his personal life. "Flow," which in my opinion is one of many variations on the hypnotic trance state, can be taught in school, in families, in workteam groups, or learned by oneself at home. It is simple to describe how one may develop "flow," though it may take hours to master the skills involved. Focusing on a worthwhile goal that is part of a larger framework of purpose enables the worker to develop her or himself while also helping the larger community reach its goals. The ability to focus one's mind while performing a task is the sine qua non of modern civilization, and is necessary to the development of our arts, sciences, and all other constructive activities--such as participation in the democratic process. A person can do everything better if the mind is focused, the attitude confident, and the body relaxed to just the right degree. A technique for learning "flow states" is described in Appendix 2. Autogenics [auto = self, genics = formation] is an adjunctive mental exercise that can be of value in developing the mental skills necessary for flow at work or at play. This more general purpose mental exercise is also particularly valuable for it's therapeutic effect on the central nervous system and for the control it teaches over autonomic functions. Autogenics is an appropriate form of meditation and relaxation in the context of a modern, high stress, time-pressured working life. A brief explanation and beginning exercises are included in Appendix 2. In the context of a syntropic democracy, these exercises leading to flow in work or play and in autogenic skills belong to the category of individual responsibility for creating oneself as an autotelic personality, that is, one who enjoys her or his own personality, activities, and actions toward goals. But if a democratically organized workplace or a syntropic community promotes the development of these psychospiritual aspects of work, then it becomes easier to merge purpose and meaning with the quality of one's life and one's work product. In that sense zero-defect production is a meditative discipline that serves the individual self as well as the workteam or community. Extensions of Democracy A principle hypothesis in this book is that the various types of institutions and corporations of the world, from the family through manufacturing and banking to religion, will all function better when democracy reaches into, and transforms, them. In their relations to the world community that surrounds them. As this is more clearly understood we will encounter the following kinds of analysis with increasing frequency: "The new world economy cannot be separated easily from the new world society, and politics is the cement that binds the two...We conclude that the profound economic changes of the past generation imply new kinds of political strategies and political arrangements. Those which work, we argue, will have to be consistent with the profound transformation in the way the world collects, processes, and communicates information. That means more inclusion, more democracy, and, ironically, more political influence over the shape of markets and social outcomes by well-organized, efficient states." [Carnoy, 1993] "Democracy is inevitable," Slater and Bennis argued in a 1964 issue of Harvard Business Review, "because it is the only system which can successfully cope with the changing demands of contemporary civilization, in business as well as in government." [Slater, 1964] There are several factors supportive of increasing democracy in the workplace. Slater and Bennis point to "organization and communication research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology" which supports the conclusions that: "For simple tasks under static conditions, an autocratic centralized structure, such as has characterized most industrial organizations in the past, is quicker, neater, and more efficient....But for adaptability to changing conditions, for 'rapid acceptance of a new idea,' for 'flexibility in dealing with novel problems, generally high morale and loyalty...the more egalitarian or decentralized type seems to work better.' One of the reasons for this is that the centralized decision-maker is 'apt to discard an idea on the grounds that he (sic) is too busy or the idea too impractical." Other factors may be even more important. "High morale and loyalty," viewed from the perspective of management, could be introspectively viewed by the worker as increased self-esteem, a sense of being valued by others in the workplace, a feeling that one's work is meaningful, that one's perspective and input to the system makes it function better and therefore makes it less frustrating, a feeling that the system is more "one's own," and that one is responsible for it as well as to it. These thoughts and feelings naturally carry over into other dimensions of each person's life. Personal health and personal relationships, including family system and childrearing, significantly improve when workers experience less stress and enjoy greater self-esteem at work. Democratic theory and practice transfer, consciously and unconsciously, from one institution to another via the medium of individual workers whose lives move through several institutional frameworks in the course of day. These feelings remain attenuated, of course, by the degree to which the owners and managers skim off profits for their own, often luxurious, consumption. If, or when, the distribution of profits is democratized the "morale and loyalty" of workers will undoubtedly improve even further. The distribution of profits is a matter of fundamental importance that writers on the subject of liberal democracy rarely discuss in detail, but it is an absolutely central issue in our working lives. In democratic theory it is often taken for granted that independent, economic power centers will always be necessary as a counterbalance to political or state power centers. However, both political and economic power can be distributed much more widely and fairly by combining constitutional rules and organizational means with the market process than by dependence on the vagaries of market economics alone. Allocating profits, an issue which preoccupies Marxists and capitalist theorists alike, will remain a primary issue in any serious consideration of social design. People will always have strong feelings about the way profits are distributed. In the 21st century this issue will likely return in new form to the agenda of ordinary public discourse--perhaps then with the cooler passions of people who have discovered a more profoundly understood common interest. Whereas in the past a serious conflict always existed vis-a-vis the control of profits, it will be increasingly seen in the future that profits are most wisely distributed on the basis of formulae that fairly include not only every individual's interests, needs, and contributions--but also the interests and contributions of larger parts, and of the whole, planetary economy. Eventually these formulae, which are likely to be applied universally, will take into a more carefully planned account the well-being of all citizens--workers, owners, and management as well as the health and future direction of the organization, the community, nation, world society, and the biosphere. The quality of life in the workplace, as well as productivity and competitiveness, is clearly increased by democratization. "Quality circles" in the workplace, while tending to be democratic in form, have a content and focus that is usually limited to the quality of a product or the efficiency with which it's produced. Quality of worklife for the worker is a different factor that is increasingly mentioned in the literature of economics and political science though it remains a factor that is difficult to quantify. Quality of life indicators have only recently begun to appear--first in revulsion against the established "Gross" National Product (GNP) mentality, and secondly, in relation to the necessity of developing "sustainable economic and ecological systems." These first attempts at including factors relating to "quality" remain somewhat crude, because "quality" is both a subjective and a broad generalization. There are, however, "measures" of subjective experience that work quite well. Subjective scales have long been used in behavioral science and in clinical medicine, e.g., subjective anxiety scales, depression inventories, subjective pain scales. An individual could be given a questionnaire that asks about many different elements of working life and asks that each element be rated on a subjective scale of one to one hundred and then compared to either a different system experienced or a proposed and imagined change. This would supply information that supplements such indicators as "rates of injury," "days of missed work," and less specific measures of "worker health, morale, and loyalty." Both workers and consumers associated with any economic product, including especially service products, could be provided with such questionnaires as one means of obtaining feedback on issues associated with work and its products. "Rational" production, consumption, and social decision-making means little until feedback loops provide for a closer correspondence between "rationalized" decision systems and "action systems," i.e., between the societal decision-making and planning, on the one hand, and on the other--actual people, actual product quality, and actual effects on the environment. Organizational Democracy Another element in the "quality of life" argument has to do with the fact that each system that we join is also a model or metaphor for other systems. As mentioned above, the patterns we experience in one system are carried, via our nervous systems, to other systems where we may then experience an uncomfortable dissonance, a reinforcing harmony, or an education from the differences among them. The more systems which function democratically, the more we will come to expect and enjoy democracy in the other systemic units of our societies--provided, of course, that the democratic units which we already have are functioning well. An authoritarian family structure trains us for authoritarian government and for authoritarian economic relations as well as for the next generation of authoritarian family life. A democratically run school or worksite, however, can lead to a person feeling that something is wrong at home if the family is not also democratic insofar as a family can be. Carrying a democratic model into the family system, however, can also lead to constructive changes at home. To put this another way, socioeconomic and political systems tend to replicate themselves throughout society via the human nervous system. The so-called "idene," the idea that acts like a gene to give birth to many replications of its manifest forms, is an important factor in the spreading of democracy. Our existing economic organizations, that is, organizations that produce goods or services tend to have authoritarian management systems that resemble bureaucratic structures--primarily because government bureaucracies have borrowed heavily from private business management. Even the new "post-bureaucratic" approach to "reinventing" government is in actuality a set of adjustments--based on innovations copied from the private sector--designed to preserve bureaucracy. Michael Barzelay, in his 1992 book entitled Breaking Through Bureaucracy, lists the following "families of ideas" that characterize the bureaucratic and the "post-bureaucratic" paradigms: public interest vs. "results citizens value," efficiency vs. "quality and value," administration vs. "production," control vs. "winning adherence to norms;" specifying functions, authority, and structure vs. "identifying missions, services, customers, and outcomes;" justify costs vs. "deliver value," enforce responsibility vs. "build accountability and strengthen working relationships," follow rules and procedures vs. "understand and apply norms, identify and solve problems, and continuously improve processes; operate administrative systems vs. "separate service from control, build support for norms, expand customer choice, encourage collective action, provide incentives, measure and analyze results, and enrich feedback." [Barzelay, 1992] Although this looks like "newspeak" rather than radical reform, the "post-bureaucratic paradigm" does represent some progress toward organizational democracy. Unfortunately, it is still couched heavily in terms of management science rather than participatory democracy. Further, in its actual implementation it is still based on top down, authoritarian management which deigns to consult with employees to elicit their suggestions while reserving ultimate decision-making authority for management. This is not organizational democracy. Organizational democracy is based on six principles: (1) the goals of the organization are democratically established by the whole community or its elected representatives, (2) the means of achieving those goals are then decided democratically within the organization itself, (3) the organization then provides accurate and timely feedback to both the community and to the organization's membership, (4) final authority to hire or fire organizational personnel rests with a democratically elected coordinating committee composed in equal numbers of representatives from (a) community government, (b) the work organization itself, and (c) the ambient community at large, and (5) both the organization and the whole community invest operational funds in the organization, and they jointly decide to share profits, reinvest in the organization, or to provide funds for other community projects. (6) Expert knowledge is recognized, and decisions are delegated to experts when appropriate. Experts, however, are ultimately responsible to the democratic organization. We need organizational democracy in all three sectors of community life--public, cooperative, and private. There will be some differences, of course, according to the sector. Technology, Jobs, and the Worker There is one other innovation in working life, the machine, that has generally been misunderstood ever since knitting machines and the Luddite reaction to them in 1811. Machines do not replace human workers. Management may decide to replace workers with machines, but it is the management decision, driven usually by the competitive market economy, that is the controlling factor. Machines generally perform dull and repetitive tasks with less error and less stress to the human body. They should be invented and employed wherever possible--but never without finding new work of equal or better quality for the human workers involved. The idea that such workers are being replaced by machines stems from the limited systems perspective which itself results from authoritarian structures of exploitation. We all work, produce, and consume as parts of a whole economic system. If we can't do one job there are plenty of other jobs that need to be done. When a particular job is better performed by a computer or a robot we should be able to rejoice. We can't, of course, if instead of looking forward to new education and job training followed by a new job we find ourselves out in the streets with no way to provide for ourselves and our loved ones. If we all had some democratic input into the system of markets for labor, it is doubtful that we should permit the huge scale of worker displacement and unemployment that exists today and that will be even more of problem in the 21st century. Global standards for taxation, interest rates, minimum wages, worker safety, and environmental protection will help stop the restless search by corporations for lower cost production sites. Global standards, however, cannot suddenly be introduced everywhere. They must be phased in gradually and unevenly according to the very different needs of people in different societies around the world. These standards and their phased introduction by nonviolent methods will have to be decided democratically, of course, or they will not be enthusiastically supported. Such standards, which can be grouped with other quality of life standards, ought first to be based on voluntary participation, then on an economic incentive structure, and finally, on economic sanctions--all to be decided and enforced by a democratic world government. If both population and productivity continue to rise, and they will so long as natural resources hold out, then their relative rates of increase will determine--in a more rationalized global economy--the amount of work that needs to be done to sustain the human species at a particular standard of living. Worktime could then be divided into (1) productive work, (2) ecological work, and (3) creative work, that is, into work that produces goods and services needed, work that maintains or improves the natural habitat, and research or creative experiment. Leisure time, in turn, can likewise be divided into play time, social/cultural interaction, and learning time. All of these times and quantities lend themselves to rational calculation and social decision on a global as well as regional and local scales. As productivity rises more people can be fed and sheltered with fewer hours of work. With fewer jobs and with wealth increasingly concentrated in the hands of capitalists, social decisions will be made to redistribute the wealth as well as the work. Since all people, including the handicapped, can do some work, welfare will become workfare. New jobs will have to be created in the public, cooperative, and private sectors, but the total number of workhours for each individual will probably be reduced. Ecology-related work will probably become a much larger share of the global workload in all three sectors. Such decisions, in order to make sense over time, will have to made in the context of a plan. Plans, of course, are structured by goals or purposes. All socially decided goals must ultimately be consistent with, and conducive of, the evolution of intelligent life and life-support systems. The role of work in the 21st century, like so many other aspects of the future, is not precisely predictable, because it depends on the creativity of the social mind and its specific inventions. Andre Gorz believed that "...most worktime in post-industrial consumer society is spent in producing and selling commodities we don't absolutely need. Such commodities (e.g., cosmetics, toiletries, many electronic gadgets, the private automobile) meet socially produced and conditioned needs which other societies have done without quite well." [Hirsch, 1981] "Gorz argues that if we "consume better"--use durable products of good quality that satisfy basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter--we could work less. Specifically, he claims that if everyone in France worked at most 24 hours per week, all basic social needs could be satisfied. Eventually, socially necessary labor time could ideally be reduced to two hours per day." (cited in Hirsch, 1981) "Ideally" is the key word. Since 1981 the average workweek has been reduced a small amount, to 36 hours a week in Germany for example, but has generally remained unchanged or, in the U.S. has actually increased even while levels of unemployment have risen. No rational distribution of workhours nor of the rational production of basic needs such as described that by Gorz appears on any national, much less international, agenda for the near future. Nor is such social intelligence likely until we begin to recognize that production and consumption are not primarily functions of such economic laws as the "law of supply and demand' but rather are primarily functions of conscious, social decision-making. As we become increasingly conscious of the social decisions we make, and as control of socioeconomic decision-making is democratized, we will become progressively more aware of both the nature and consequences of our own decision processes, and work will be more rationally distributed. We can even imagine 21st century, nonmandatory, guidelines established for democratic communities by a "World Labor Council" that suggests Worktime per person=Total Species Production Time divided by the Number of Working Individuals (within overlapped timespans). Lifetime Leisure Hours per Working Person would equal daily free Time per Person X Length of Working Life/Person. Ages of onset of productive labor, age of retirement, level of material goods/species and per individual, remaining natural resources on Earth and in the Solar System, quality of health, environment, and of life (species-wide, regional, local) could all be factors taken into account when planning is done based not solely on market factors but also on the quality of human life. When Gorz wrote his Farewell to the Working Class [Gorz, 1982] he left open and unresolved the question of what form of action, or which political force, might replace the working class in progressive movements toward social change. He believed, however, that "...a different kind of society, opening up new spaces of autonomy, can only emerge if individuals set out from the very beginning to invent and implement new relationships and forms of autonomy."(p.11) The 21st century will likely bring, for objective as well as subjective reasons, increasing individual autonomy in the workplace as well as during leisure time. With rapidly improving computers, interactive electronic information networks, artificial intelligence software, robotics, virtual reality, interactive home entertainment systems, home education courses, computer conferencing, improved methods of self-health care, family self-therapy, individual and household ecoteams, and more responsive local democratic communities will contribute to the trend toward self-reliance--all in the context of heightened global awareness of human needs in crisis situations such as natural disasters or local food shortages. But it is also likely to bring into being new, more autonomous, social forms. A noncoercive World Economic Plan will probably lead to the formation of large workgroups related to bioregions and comprised of smaller, relatively autonomous, communities. Problems of overpopulation, coupled with scarce and dwindling resources, may well lead to problems with massive legal and illegal migration of peoples which, in turn, could lead to tighter border controls and increased autonomy within boundaries. Autonomous social formations relating under conditions of scarcity could easily fall into violent conflict, but war would evoke dangers of species self-destruction because of the presence of weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, a United Nations or World Democracy would have to be given the power to enforce peace and to organize or coordinate the world economy so as to reduce conflicts over scarce resources. Autonomous Worker Cooperatives For centuries workers have been organized by, and subjected to, authoritarian control of one kind or another. In the modern world, as will be increasingly true in the post-modern future, we are learning that humans can work together more efficiently and more happily if the organization of work is based on democratic processes that are ultimately controlled not by private owners nor by large public bureaucracies but by the workers themselves. The early history of worker-owned cooperatives is filled with wildly idealistic and improbable schemes that utilized even less realistic models of human behavior than the infamous homo economicus. From the Owenites through the Paris Commune to the Soviets the path is strewn with failures though none, of course, so colossal or tragic as the Stalinist nation-state. The principle causes of these failures are debatable. I would argue that they can be narrowed down to a few with the most important being the absence of "aporetic democracy." By aporetic democracy I mean a democratic process that questions its fundamental assumptions, critically reviews its own processes, opens itself to new ideas, and periodically revises itself for continuous improvement. Some of the kibbutzim in Israel, at least one of which is (at this writing) over ninety years old, and the Mondragon complex in Spain, provide proof that with an aporetic and democratic self-government the worker-owned enterprises and communities can survive even in a hostile world. The oldest kibbutz, for example, recently decided to alter tradition and raise capital for the improvement of its competitive position in the market by selling shares on the Israeli stock exchange. While 80% of all business firms initiated in the United States failed within five years the Mondragón cooperative complex grew from one cooperative of 23 workers in 1956 to 19,500 workers in one hundred cooperatives by 1986 with only three failures in thirty years. [Whyte, 1991] They have dealt with economic recessions, modernization problems, and the expansions of the European Economic Community while continuing to grow. The problem of expert business knowledge in a large, democratically managed, worker-owned cooperative has been contrasted to that in private industry in the U.S. as follows: "In U.S. private industry, union leaders often demand the right to detailed financial and operating information. This right has been vigorously resisted in most companies as an invasion of managerial prerogatives. Executives consider such information proprietary and therefore to be withheld from workers as well as competitors...In Mondragón, the problem for worker-members is not in gaining access but in coping with the abundance of technical and financial information that is available. The severity of the problem depends in part on the size of the organization. In a small cooperative, members can readily grasp the relation between their labor and skill and the overall performance of the cooperative. In a large cooperative, and in a cooperative group, the information must necessarily be communicated in a more abstract and general form, which makes it more difficult for members to understand the relation between their labor and the overall figures. The size and complexity of ULGOR and FAGOR [units in the Mondragón complex] greatly complicate communications problems. Because all the members have a right to vote on the business plan of the cooperative and also on whether they approve or disapprove of the performance of management, the leaders are concerned about finding ways to simplify the process of providing and discussing the information while still presenting economic and technological realities. "The communication of figures and plans is not a simple step from the preparation of materials by management to the presentation of the facts and figures to the membership at the annual meeting of the cooperative group. In the FAGOR cooperatives, for example, groups of members are taken off their jobs on company time for the presentation and discussion of issues that will be voted on in the annual meeting. The General Assembly of FAGOR, made up of elected representatives of the member cooperatives, then discusses these issues with the members before they are voted on. The Central Social Council also has one or more sessions each year at which business plans and annual reports are presented and discussed. Furthermore, when major structural changes are proposed for the cooperative group, as in the recent reorganization of FAGOR, an enormous amount of time is invested by management in preparing informational materials and in training those who are to present and interpret them to the rest of the cooperative group. The costs of this process, including materials preparation time, training time, and time for which workers are paid but away from their jobs, are very substantial. For example, planning and discussion meetings before the general assembly meeting in ULGOR to vote on the business plan for 1985-86 cost management an estimated 14 million pesetas, which is 7,000 pesetas, or more than $50, for each of the approximately two thousand members of ULGOR. Meetings to plan the 1986 reorganization of FAGOR cost 172 million pesetas, well over $1 million." [Whyte, 1991] Categories and Communities If, as I expect, the world democracy of the future chooses to conceptualize economies as composed of three sectors, namely privately, cooperatively, or communally owned and managed, and if--as so many of us believe--the political organization of the world will tend toward centralization of some functions but decentralization of many economic and political decisions, then the structure of the world's political economy is likely to be based on people who are making most decisions together in relatively small, autonomous communities whose security is assured by national, regional, and world peacekeeping forces, and whose exchange activities are coordinated, through centralized world offices of a democratic world system. Deciding which functions or decisions will be made locally, nationally, or in the world's governing center is, of course, the sticky business of a multileveled democracy. It seems natural to assume, however, that the world will consist of several levels of administrative districts and that larger districts or the world center will be assigned the role of overseeing those resource management and productive functions that require large scale investments of both capital and human expertise. Accordingly, I would expect that categories will be developed, and some economic projects will be assigned a category based the size, capital, and knowledge required for optimal effectiveness in achieving the stated goals. According to the category assigned, and the location of necessary resources, the project's democratic controls will be placed at that level of district administration and in that particular district that is most appropriate. Since the syntropic community can form itself around particular economic projects, or any other type of project or goal, we can expect that syntropic communities will exist with a wide variety of characteristics and in relation to a wide variety of categories. Large corporations carrying out very large economic projects may be composed of individual members from several small syntropic communities that form an association based on their involvement in a common economic endeavor. Each such community, ought to strive--even in midst of its specialization--for an appropriate degree of economic and political autonomy. The wholeness of understanding that results from cross-fertilization and mutual enrichment among different human endeavors can only benefit a specialized community. An individual who combines different kinds of work and study can bring new ideas and information from one field of knowledge or experience to another, and each specialty will be mutually enriched without significant sacrifice--if the right combination of specialization with interdependence balanced with self-sufficient, multi-skilled independence can be achieved.