INTEGRAL ANTI-CAPITALISM cont'd.

[Layman Pascal]

For an introduction to this expanding meta-thread see Integral Anti-Capitalism pt I. We continue here because we have, hilariously, exceeded this website's capacity...

LAYMAN PASCAL

I agree that holacracy should be singled out for special investigation. The provocative notion that we are dramatically over-emphasizing the need for "conscious leadership" pertains very pertinently to this discussion. Robertson, like ourselves, is pointing to the fact that business (organizations) which integrally improve the interiors and cultural
spirit of their participants are still predisposed to certain outcomes as a result of their actual structural habits of communication and their specific decision-making protocols.
His notion of a constantly self-correcting dynamic organization drawing upon the capacity of individuals to act as tension-sensors relative to the "evolutionary purpose" of the organization is compelling and admirable.

More important is simply that he is making a stand and making an attempt to construct a protocol (constitution). I am not fully versed in the 4.0 version of the holacracy constitution but we should get deeper into some of these proposals.  

Given the level of your current knowledge of their protocols, what would you want to change or add in order to ethically and functionally empower this approach even more?

THEURJ

First some housekeeping in providing links in part I to comments on holacracy: their website, comment 1, comment 2, comment 3 (and 3 more on p. 7), and the first 7 comments on p. 8. 

I’m not yet familiar enough with holacracy to know it might need. So for now I’ll ask questions.  From p. 8 there was a blog post on ownership and the model might (but not necessarily) include outside capital investors. I asked:

“One question immediately pops up on outside investors. Are there limits on the amount of outside capital investment? What if their investment is such that without it the company could not financially survive? And/or depends on it for start-up? Then such investment would control the company, like it or not. If you don't do what I say I'm taking my ball and going home. No ball, no ballgame. Not the same as a mortgage or loan company.”

Granted why such investors are included on the Board there are other stake-holders to balance their input. But are there rules about which outside individuals or companies can invest? Do they have to have similar values like triple bottom lines instead of just profit for their investors? Can a Goldman Sachs provide start-up capital? Or Romeny’s ex-firm, Bain? Just wondering, so perhaps it’s time for those out there more familiar with the system to engage us?

LAYMAN PASCAL

I appreciate your inquiry about the potential influence of outside investors in holacratic systems. Perhaps they have a good protocol for that. Or perhaps not. In general, all "smart groups" need to comprehend and anticipate the distortion influence that donors and enablers wield. The psychology of human nature shows that we may believe ourselves to be quite sturdy and impartial while we are really bending in the breeze.

One of the concerns I had while perusing the holacracy constitution was about the voting procedure for filling roles. There are many parts of their approach which impress. In particular I would like to make not of the necessity to place constraints upon discussion. When the mention of a concern is met with the mention of counter-concerns then the intelligence and practical efficacy of discussions drops dramatically. A highly suspicious mind might even supposed that the human hive is encouraged to engage in the constant casual usage of dysfunctional conversation. So their use of controlled phases in both operational and hiring decisions is admirable. However, their actual voting protocol seems (to my naive glance) to be based on a model of transparent majority. A sophisticated "show of hands".

So this may be an area in which holacratic principles can be expanded to include a more thorough use of "secret ballot" and "averaged ranking".

The former often seems like a show of bad faith and an invitation to covert dangers... but these are considerably outweighed by the liberation of individual intelligence from any conscious or unconscious concerns about the social consequences of their input.

The latter evades a primitive "first past the post" approach in which our intelligence is functionally limited to a yes/no determination about each candidate relative to other candidates.

Another thing I admire about holacracy is that it represents a functional procedure and culture in which participants would appear to become better participants by participating. Their capacity and ethical commitment to the good of the organization through its evolving protocols should be an increasing trend. Any smart group needs to be arranged so that even people who try to distort the results will find their capacity and will to do this reducing over time. Replaced by the inspirational efficacy of the group.

This brings me to another issue relative to voting, both in political and economic groups. That is the relative absence of specific instructions about how to translated ones feelings into a vote-mark. This is almost completely unaddressed in terms of popular elections. To discuss it even seems insidious to some people who fear coercion (and/or wish to maintain the current material power structures).

Protocols should have at least a clear suggestion about how to locate both "gut" and "intellectual" data within ourselves and convert that into a numerical value which can be contributed to a group decision. A lack of clarification at this critical junction may act as an invisible source of drag upon an otherwise very functional group organism.

It might even be possible to define an "integral-level organizational set up" for business or politics by simply compiling a list of areas in which intelligence and capacity are distorted. We might recall that most of Wilber's philosophy has emerged in levels correlated to his discovery of "fallacies" or "basic errors". Integral proposals about business and society could be all over the map unless there is a reasonable set of constraints that make sure they fall in the most lucrative zone.

So other than the potential influence of outside "helpers" and "donors" what other sources of distortion or inhibition do you see going mostly unaddressed in otherwise progressive groups?

THEURJ

My next question of holacracy is who came up with it? It seems to be the pet project of Brian Robertson, his own brainchild. I'm wondering if that is so of if it was a community or P2P project? I mean, the structure of holacracy itself calls for distributed decision-making but was the creation of holacracy itself derived from this process or mostly dictated by Robertson? I've yet to find an answer at the site so I posed this question to them via contact info. I'll provide the response if/when received. I think the answer is pivotal in determining if this thing called holacracy arose from its own medicine.

LAYMAN PASCAL

I look forward that answer if it is forthcoming. The notion of self-arising systems is something which haunts the periphery of these discussions. My fantasy is that we can devise a group protocol which so reliably and simply exceeds the cognitive capacity of the individual participants that it would be foolish to predetermine the purpose and nature of the group. Collectively we could a better job of determining what kind of a collective we should be. "Smartgroups" of this kind could then spread through the world in a very radical social uprising. How possible that is remains uncertain...

As I understand holacracy, the different companies making use of it are assumed to engage in their own mutational modifications of the "constitution". So even if Brian wrote the whole thing out in his bathtub it still retains an open source quality. The answer to whether its current forms are or are not the result of distributed decision-making is almost certainly: sort of.

One of the reasons the holacracy approach is so amenable to business organization is that it seems to depend upon the functional axis of a specified purpose. The aim is somewhat pregiven -- our job is to sell widgets or maximize share-holder profit, etc. His use of the metaphor of the sensors on an airplane derives from a mechanism that is assumed to be designed for a well-known purpose.

My question would be whether or not this "aim" is a necessarily functional element in generating enhanced organizational capacity? Or whether it is simply an artifact of the need to make these systems serve a relatively conventional marketplace task?

THEURJ

Your suggestion of a smart group that arises creatively from a continually evolving set of parameters seems to be the intent and practice of holacracy. As to the organizational purpose of Holacracy One, it seems to have multiple bottom lines including but not limited to profit. For example, see this post in the comments where I noted that the top to bottom pay ratio is 3 to 1, and quoted some of those multiple purposes:

"With Holacracy at play, the game is entirely different: with the decentralization of authority, the separation of people and role, and the dynamic evolution of those roles, we end up with a situation that looks more like free agents going about their work with no central planning. There might not even be a single person who knows about everything you do."

This sounds much more like the sort of emerging P2P organizational structure discussed throughout this thread. And also of significance in the post following this article where The Integral Center of Boulder has "voluntarily relinquished their rights to control their company as owners. Instead, they have ceded authority to a purpose-centered governance process called Holacracy, a model that distributes authority across the organization and gives primary power to the organization itself."

These are indeed advances over the kind of conscious capitalism promoted and AQALly packaged for sale at I-I.

LAYMAN PASCAL

(comment pending)

This is an interesting moment. Apparently Amazon.com is experimenting with a version of holacracy as well. It clearly represents a theoretical advance over the typical kind of conscious capitalism which combines advanced sentiments with a potentially dangerous and uninspected ideological allegiance to more primitive routines of social organization and wealth production. Yet we cannot know the results of the experiment in advance.

I have tremendous optimism about emergent p2p organizational structures. Experimentation is utterly necessary and should be strongly encouraged. I am also very hopeful that advances can be made in terms of quantification. This is very central in my thinking lately.

It seems that experimental protocols for advances social organization systems suffer from the lack of a quantifiable evaluation of their respective degrees of "collective intelligence". Most people are drawn to such possibilities by ethical and aesthetic criteria which do no necessarily persuade the world. So I would love to see experimentation supplemented by the attempt to devise a metric for estimating the intelligence of a social organization protocol.

Along similar lines, my "tetrabucks" type notions represent the possibility/necessity to structure our currency at a level that correlates to advanced P2P organizational structures and post-pluralistic consciousness.

The potential of an evil holacracy has hardly been broached. If it works -- it works. Other than simply the tendency of less complex people not to use more complex systems, and the tendency of more complex systems to complexify their participants, there needs to be some inter-organizational structures which incline all organizations int he direction of broad human well-being. It is my assertion that as long as primary areas of value remain outside monetization the actions of groups trying to utilize official social credits will constantly become unstable.

So I am imagining a line leading from pathological capitalism to standard capitalism to conscious capitalism to trans-capitalist network organizations to such organizations bound together by a integrated set of metrics for determining the intelligence of groups and splicing together (at least) four broad domains of human value.

Along these lines -- how will we decide whether holacratic integral business is working better?

THEURJ

As to how we determine whether alternative economic paradigms are 'working,' I'd suggest that even by the standards of typical business democratic workplaces like co-ops are successful. If by that we mean the organization runs smoothly, has low employee turnover, high employee satisfaction, makes a profit or surplus over operating costs, and other such typical measures. Plus they fulfill their stated purposes as expressed in theRochdale principles, like community education, cooperation, democratic control, etc.

I'd say the same applies to holacracy. They also have to accomplish the usual business parameters like above but also meet stated principles like in their constitution. Given Robertson's business acumen I'm sure at the site he has precise and measurable indices to track such progress, though I didn't try to find them as yet.

LAYMAN PASCAL

(comment pending)

[Balder]

Edgar Morin on "The Way" Forward

[Edward theurj Berge]

"There is nothing much in Mr Morin's 'Voie' which is likely to impress Ossama Bin Laden or the Chinese leadership."

Which is the problem with philosophy generally; it's an ivory tower edifice that rarely makes it into policy. Rifkin's work though is being taken up by national governments, including China.

Note though that Ayn Rand has most certainly and strongly affected regressive policy.

[DavidM58]

Overall, a well-done article on Morin. Interesting that the article compares the book to a tract by Stephane Hessel. In 2012 the book The Path to Hope was published, co-written by Hessel and Morin.

Another book by an ex-Marxist nonagenarian (person in their nineties) that I highly recommend is The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the 21st Cen... by Grace Lee Boggs (who has a philosophy degree, but is no ivory tower thinker). "She draws from seven decades of activist experience, and a rigorous commitment to critical thinking, to redefine “revolution” for our times."

Balder said:

Edgar Morin on "The Way" Forward

[Darrell R. Moneyhon]

I liked this: "But it was the regulation imposed on Western economies (even in the United States) by states and trades unions in the first half of the 20th century, that saved the world from Bolshevik revolution and Communism, not Mrs Thatcher or Ronald Reagan." Radical, unregulated, capitalism seems to be one of the greatest culprits of threat to worldwide human well being or even existence. We wisely placed a regulated form of capitalism in Germany following WWII to prevent a replay of fanatical political backlash from gross inequality of income and power. The plutocratic Jewish business people became demonized by radical populism which then led to gross overgeneralization and racism and evil acts that dramatically prove how two wrongs don't make a right. You don't kill all Jews because a few of them played the unregulated "game" well enough to be rich and act like plutocrats. That's of course more "wrong" than the plutocrats were in the first time. By regulating capitalism so that it doesn't make such a class struggle then you keep the tensions and unrest from causing gross over-reaction of the evil  kind. If you can reduce the pressure by regulation, then perhaps also it will also be easier to evolve the "game" closer to resource-sharing systems or "integral resource-ism that counts all four quadrant resources -- especially those rich valuable HUMAN resources -- instead of just material "capital" or "stuff." Keynesian economics is not so big a step from integral resource-ism as is Chicago School or Freedman radically unregulated capitalism. This radical free market madness model will resist resource sharing harder than a softer Keynesian model (or other mixed or regulated economic models). "Sharing" is too antithetical to Radical Free Market economies. A lion refuses to act like a lamb, but a donkey might be willing to act like a lamb now and then (and potentially allow its ways into the donkey's life). 

darrell

theurj said:

"There is nothing much in Mr Morin's 'Voie' which is likely to impress Ossama Bin Laden or the Chinese leadership."

Which is the problem with philosophy generally; it's an ivory tower edifice that rarely makes it into policy. Rifkin's work though is being taken up by national governments, including China.

Note though that Ayn Rand has most certainly and strongly affected regressive policy.

[DavidM58]

Darrell,

Good quote to bring out in regards to post-WWII regulation of the economy.  I've lately been drawn to the analysis of economist Peter Pogany who interprets through a Gebserian lens. He adopts "Gebser's systatic approach, which emphasizes structure and the temporal element at the expense of narrow empiricism and sectored rationality." [1] This seems to have a parallel with Morin's "Complex Thought" approach.

Pogany's application of this approach is to combine human biomass with human produced structures into a single entity he calls "the global population plus economy" (GLOPPE). He calls this "the ultimate macroscopic variable we should consider in order to have a clear idea about the nature and extent of the crisis our generation faces."

As Gebser noted, a "breaking forth in time" occurred in the late 18th Century, marked by the emergence of the steam engine [and of coal as an energy source], and the French revolution. Pogany notes that "the world's first chaotic transition, similar in character and function  to the one which has begun with the current global crisis, lasted from 1789 through the mid-1830s. It led to the creation of free markets for commodities, money, and labor, ushering in the world's first global system (GS1), laissez faire/metal money/zero multilateralism." [I believe Pogany is here marking subdivisions that Gebser himself did not make, within what Gebser characterized as the current "Mental" stage of consciousness.]

Much success ensued. By the early 20th century, however, GS1 came into what would in Gebserian terms be called it's "deficient" stage. Every stage concludes with a deficient stage, and we do not see smooth transitions that evolve to the next stage. For this reason Gebser did not like the term "evolution," but rather spoke of mutation. Each period of mutation was accomplished by breakdown and crisis before the new system would emerge. And so we see the period between 1914 to 1945, between which were experienced two world wars and the great depression.

Emerging from that crisis was what Pogany called GS2 - the period you referred to Darrell, where Roosevelt's New Deal and the Keynesian economic model was predominant. Pogany characterizes GS2 as "mixed economy/minimum bank reserve money/weak multilateralism."

GS2 performed very admirably for about 60 years. Some of the signs of deficiency, however, have been around a long time, at least since Carson's Silent Spring and the Meadows, et al Limits to Growth books, and the first American oil crisis. Real deficiency came with what you call the "radical free market madness model" that were put in place with Reagan and Thatcher (what Gebser might have called the "overdetermination" phase).  And the global crisis of mutation/transition began with 9/11 and marked again with the collapsing economies of 2008.

Pogany argued that we will not gently transition to a new structure via a series of more progressive reforms, but instead will experience a series of crises that will get much worse before the new integral-aperspectival structure that Gebser predicted will finally emerge. This is where it could be very interesting to compare the Wilber/AQAL model, which seems to emphasize time's arrow of evolutionary progress with Gebser's model that emphasized instead cycles and mutations marked by transitions that featured breakdown and crisis - which I think more closely matches history. "The grand and painful path of consciousness emergence" (EPO, p. 542).

Pogany points out the huge price that had to be paid (with the two world wars), just to make a relatively small transition from GS1 to GS2.

There is hope that a third global system might yet emerge, GS3, which might "create a more sustainable balance between GLOPPE and humanity's ecological niche. GS3 may be called, two-level economy/maximum bank reserve money/strong multilateralism. Micro-activities would be subject to globally-determined and nationally allocated macro-constraintes; money creation would be curbed and disciplined." [Perhaps parallel to Rifkin's 3rd revolution, or Morin's dictum that "we must globalize and deglobalize."]

However, again, Pogany emphasized it very likely won't be an easy transition, and the crisis might in fact last the rest of the current century. Sadly, Pogany passed away several months ago. Reportedly, he had completed a new book, titled: "Twenty First Century, Thy Name is Havoc."

References (all quotes above are from this reference):

1. Gebser's Relevance to the Global Crisis, Peter Pogany, Oct. 2011
http://ppogany.svrpress.com/GebserConferencePaper2011.pdf

See also:

New Scientific evidence confirms Geser's concerns about technological overreach, Peter Pogany, 2010
http://ppogany.svrpress.com/GebserConferencePaper2010.pdf

How are Al Gore, Stephen King, and Jean Gebser Related? Peter Pogany, brief intro to the paper below.
http://blog.gebser.net/

"What will the parameters of the new global system be? Regardless of how correctly or incorrectly one may characterize it, any consistent attempt to find an answer must conclude that a radically new social, economic, and political organization will be needed. The precondition of saving the world from itself is a mutation of the average individual consciousness. It will favor cooperation over competition; acquiescence over indifference; responsible sociability over isolation; integrative open-mindedness over stubborn, perspectival dogmatism, altruism over extrasomatic hedonism.  

This is the subject of my new paper, which is maintained at University of Munich's (ungated) e-archives of econ lit:"

Thermodynamic Isolation and the New World Order, Peter Pogany research paper, 2013

http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49924/ 

Rethinking The World, Peter Pogany, 2006
http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-World-Peter-Pogany/dp/0595678688

"The post-Marxian, new historical materialism described in this book breathes new life into our comprehension of the world. A 200-year perspective on modernity tells us that an all-embracing physical phenomenon holds humankind in its grip.

History has recorded two distinct global systems thus far: "laissez faire/metal money," which spanned most of the 19th century and lasted until the outbreak of World War I, and "mixed economy/weak multilateralism," which began after 1945 and exists today. The period between the two systems, 1914-1945, was a chaotic transition. This evolutionary pulsation is well known to students of thermodynamics. It corresponds to the behavior of expanding and complexifying material systems."

Darrell R. Moneyhon said:

I liked this: "But it was the regulation imposed on Western economies (even in the United States) by states and trades unions in the first half of the 20th century, that saved the world from Bolshevik revolution and Communism, not Mrs Thatcher or Ronald Reagan." Radical, unregulated, capitalism seems to be one of the greatest culprits of threat to worldwide human well being or even existence. We wisely placed a regulated form of capitalism in Germany following WWII to prevent a replay of fanatical political backlash from gross inequality of income and power. The plutocratic Jewish business people became demonized by radical populism which then led to gross overgeneralization and racism and evil acts that dramatically prove how two wrongs don't make a right. You don't kill all Jews because a few of them played the unregulated "game" well enough to be rich and act like plutocrats. That's of course more "wrong" than the plutocrats were in the first time. By regulating capitalism so that it doesn't make such a class struggle then you keep the tensions and unrest from causing gross over-reaction of the evil  kind.

...This radical free market madness model will resist resource sharing harder than a softer Keynesian model (or other mixed or regulated economic models). "Sharing" is too antithetical to Radical Free Market economies. A lion refuses to act like a lamb, but a donkey might be willing to act like a lamb now and then (and potentially allow its ways into the donkey's life). 

darrell

[Edward theurj Berge]

"This is where it could be very interesting to compare the Wilber/AQAL model, which seems to emphasize time's arrow of evolutionary progress with Gebser's model that emphasized instead cycles and mutations marked by transitions that featured breakdown and crisis - which I think more closely matches history."

This is the general idea I used to describe not only the different cultural worldview eras but also the very nature of an individual human's assemblage. I used Gebser, Luhmann, Bryant, DeLanda and many more sources to show that even within us the so-called 'levels' are indeed autonomous suobjects that communicate via structural coupling rather than being just lower levels subsumed in the higher aggregate. The most recent example is the fold thread, which brings in several other threads.

[Edward theurj Berge]

This video on the unconditional basic income is enlightening.

[Edward theurj Berge]

He reports on this experiment in rural India. Compared to the control group the unconditional basic income substantially increased recipient labor, productivity and work. All social indicators were better. It cost less than existing social programs. People were twice as likely to increase their productivity at work. They increased their livestock by 70%. They were more likely to increase their income from work. They were 3 times more likely to start a new business. There was significant reduction of debt and increase in savings. They were more likely to improve their living conditions and hence healthier children. And so on.

When you are freed from survival needs you can invest your time and energy into achieving something meaningful. We've discussed this early in part 1, how once we have surplus at lower needs we can use it to develop our higher needs.

[andrew]

If anyone is interested they can search about the chemical dispersant Corexit used in the gulf. Many people are dying because of this chemical. Now, if I use a chemical that kills people then I think that is a type of homicide. So, yes, it should be criminal! I don't think that comment is hyperbole or out of context. But, I post here to not derail the Rifkin thread.  

[andrew]

You know, an individual would not be allowed to take known carcinogenic chemicals and spray them in the petrochemical C.E.O.'s homes and properties. An individual who did so would be labelled a criminal and charged. Yet, our  civilization has given these corporations a free pass to commit the most egregious environmental crimes. We have allowed them to pass global free trade deals that guarantee their right to despoil the earth for the profit of the 1%. Yes, the lunatics have taken over the asylum!

[andrew]

and this:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/politicians_ignore_peoples_powe...

The corporatocracy can get away with murder as they have stolen the political system. Oiligarchs and Plutocrats.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Then we the people have to get active and demand they follow our wishes. If not then we have to do everything in our collective power to get them out of office and elect those that will represent us. Yes, it will demand a lot of us. But remember what it demanded of our forebears, many giving up their very lives for democracy. The least we can do is get off our asses and invest what time we have to re-institute it. If we don't then we get the oligarchy we deserve.