Some thoughts on worker management and political freedom
Dr Kofi Afful
Dr Kofi Afful, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Development Studies, University of Cape Coast, presented this paper at International Association of Business and Management Students (AIESEC) week recently. Below is a condensed report.A free enterprise system in which everyone has a stake - a system in which workers themselves, through their elected representatives, are in charge of their destiny, is a prerequisite of economic and political freedom.
Sure, we have the liberal democratic free enterprise system and the state controlled enterprise system. And the proponents of these systems swear that they ensure individual liberty, but do they?
The Capitalist system is based on individual ownership of unlimited private property. This is what is responsible for unemployment and inflation.
Unemployment reduces the worker to a slave. During periods of recession the producer quickly forgets that the people he has laid off helped him make his millions a while ago; he now shirks them when they need him the most. Wherein lies the freedom of the worker?
When private ownership of property is welded to profit maximisation the result is gross inequity in the distribution of the nation's resources.
Unemployment and inequity breed social pressures that lead to frustration, alienation, drug and alcohol abuse and high crime rates.
The political management of the society under this system is entrusted to political parties. There are always two or more political parties to compete for people's votes.
The rationale is that people should have a choice in the decision as to who should manage the affairs of the nation. However, since the individual ownership of property ensures the existence of a very rich class and since only the rich can afford to seek elective office, the elected rulers naturally busy themselves with promoting the interest of the rich..
So the choice, which has been raised to the status of a sacred cow, is a figment of the imagination of the lesser mortals in these societies. The polarisation into rich and poor obviously affects the judicial system which is supposed to be impartial. It cannot be impartial, it has to favour the rich.
MARXIST SYSTEM
Under the Marxist/Communist system, all property belongs to the state. This immediately goes against the natural urge to accumulate property for one's own use, to own a house, to help one's children live better than one did, etc. Therefore, to keep the system going, repressive measures to choke the urge to amass private wealth and stop people from complaining become part of the ideological apparatus.But state ownership of property dulls the incentive to give of one's best in any endeavour (except beat the system) and to introduce new ideas to facilitate the modernisation process.
Arbitrary rule is also the stock in trade in Third World countries even though virtually all of them have constitutions in which justice, equality and all kinds of freedoms are enshrined.
In classical Marxism the political management of the system is in the hands of the Vanguard of the masses, the liquidation of the greedy bourgeois capitalist class and ushered in the classless society. In the real world caricatures of the Marxist idea leadership is composed of a small clique that may respond only to the very active party membership, but party membership, let alone active party membership, is always a small proportion of the population. Thus the leadership does not represent the mass of the people.
Unrepresentative leadership plus the institutionalisation of repressive measures spell arbitrary rule. Real World Marxist states, therefore, ride roughshod on personal freedom - the freedom to worship, the freedom to emigrate, the freedom to express a dissenting view. And the judiciary is dependent on the dictates of the state, that is the party, or more precisely, the ruling clique. This system stultifies the human condition.
ARBITRARINESS
Arbitrary rule is also the stock in trade in Third World countries even though virtually all of them have constitutions in which justice, equality and all kinds of freedoms are enshrined. In one sense arbitrary rule develops because of an inability on the part of leadership to admit mistakes or accept criticism.Not only can Third World countries be said to be in some kind of transition, they are also in a state of flux, and many leaders have no clear vision of the desired and feasible political, social and economic path to tread. This results in the adoption of policies which lack internal logic and realism and, very often, merely succeed in reducing social welfare.
People criticise, quite naturally, but criticism is immediately dubbed anti- social, and critics are liable to pay dearly for their foolhardiness. The government, remember, has a monopoly over repressive instruments The same criticism and the resultant use of state power which obtain over leadership has a well articulated set of objectives because, somehow, the exhortation to all citizens to come together to build the nation is interpreted to mean that all citizens share the same views on nation building, and the use of identical instruments or strategies to achieve the goals.
In the economic sphere, Third World nations have adopted policies that have only succeeded in enriching & small segment of the population usually at the expense of the rural majority; we are talking of 70 to 80 percent of the population.
Thus the same polarisation into rich a poor develops only in this case, the poor lack the basic prerequisites of meaningful existence. Also, any economic development strategy that leaves out such a huge chunk of the nation's human resources is bound to result in extremely low growth of economic well being. Indeed, in many countries, such strategy has been found to ...
Political instability in Third World countries is, in great part, an expression of the frustration that results from stagnant economic fortunes and unbelieveable inequalities in distribution on one side and the so-called rising expectations on the other. But political instability implies, among other things, that fresh developmental policies cannot be properly thought out, much less implemented thus perpetuating social stagnation or decline.
We need several policies to reverse this trend and for me the most important is economic freedom and security for every citizen to ensure political freedom, justice, and equality in the domestic economy. I have al- ready remarked that Third World countries are subject to arbitrary rule despite the existence of constitutions. We hear it said often that in the Third World Constitutions, however beautiful on paper are no more and no less than what the leadership chooses to make of them.
The implication is obvious. Whether the political system is based on one party, two parties, a lot of parties or no party, it is difficult to prevent abuses if the socio-economic system itself does not eliminate the possibilities for abuse. The way to eliminate the possibilities is to ensure economic freedom for all citizens.
ECONOMIC FREEDOM
How does one achieve economic freedom? The purpose of economic activity is to satisfy human wants and needs. But a right to a share in the goods and services that a society produces should be matched by a duty to participate in the production of these goods and services. The develop- ment process should therefore be a mass process.People, says Nyerere, not projects - should be the centrepiece of the development process. And to drastic- ally reduce the glaring inequalities inherent in private ownership of property on the one side, and low worker productivity associated with staff ownership on the other we suggest worker management of productive enterprises.
Workers could be encouraged and assisted to buy majority shares in existing enterprises and in the process take over the management of the enterprises or they could contribute to set up new enterprises managed and run by themselves.
Will labour managed firms be as efficient as their capitalistic counterparts? There is a lot of literature on this and the answer always depends on the political inclinations of the researchers.
This mode of organising production caters to the natural urge to accumulate wealth; it therefore kindles the incentive to work hard and encourages initiative - on the part of individuals. At the same time, it puts a brake on unbridled acquisition of private property. The system puts workers in charge of their own destiny and introduces a worker responsibility known in the workplaces of only a few countries.
Unemployment will cease to be a serious social problem because there will be very little of it. Ultimately, we shall not have employers and workers. Most of the nation will be self employed, and trade unions which now agitate in the interest of unproductive urban workers, will find little reason for continued existence.
