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)

[andrew]

On the Hedges speech: 

- I agree with him that the Bernie Sanders platform is morally repugnant from the perspective of the Palestinian people. However, Islam's attitude towards the jewish people and Israel in general is also morally repugnant; as was Christianity's treatment of the jewish people for 2000 years; as is this toxic relationship between todays Christian Zionists and The State of Israel . 

-his speech omitted P.O. and clean energy to scale and natural limits to growth . He referenced climate change often but predicted short tern cataclysm which I don't fully agree with . 

-he referenced Marxist thought often which I don't have a problem with per se ; but i am of the opinion that this bitter economic war between 1850 thinkers ( Adam Smith and Marx ) needs to be put to rest . This bitter dichotomy is really not going to solve anything . New ways of thinking about the current serious problems need to be considered . And all the best Wall St. advertising advocating neo-Adam Smith ideas are doomed to failure ( sorry city of Calgary). 

-it took place in a church but god was never mentioned . Probably a good thing as humans haven't been able to imagine an ass-holon that didn't have the character traits of a psychopath; although i've never once  gotten the impression that Jesus as portrayed in scripture was a psychopathic mad man . But most of the current versions of religion surrounding his myth imply that, indeed, he is a psychopath . Go figure .

- he seemed to be advocating for some kind of mono-logical global super-socialist state . This is the weakest part of his thinking , IMO. ;  I would argue  that we already live in that system-a super corporate global socialist state - where welfare has been transferred to the elite . They are soon to own 50% of the worlds wealth and it's hard to not see this as any thing but a theft of the highest order . 

[Edward theurj Berge]

See this article by Michel Bauwens and Franco Iacomella. It criticizes our current economic system on three levels:

1. The current political economy is based on a false idea of material abundance.
2. The current political economy is based on a false idea of immaterial scarcity.
3. The pseudo-abundance that destroys the biosphere, and the contrived scarcity that keeps innovation artificially scarce and slow, does not advance social justice.

The new vision centers around civil society's duty to sustain the material commons as well as share the immaterial cultural commons. The private sphere has its place for scarce goods and services but must be regulated properly by the government sector to prevent destructive and pathological greed while promoting its social responsibility. Democratic economic businesses like co-ops are encouraged.

The new civilization is not a return to premodern holism where the individual is subsumed in the government. "It is a society based on cooperative individualism rather than collectivism." This is exemplified by peer production between free agents working together for the common good.

There is much more in the article by way of details. Please give it a read.

[DavidM58]

I very much like this framing [The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market & State]. I've seen too many critiques of the current economic system that emphasize the problems associated with scarcity economics - the idea that that society has insufficient productive resources to fulfill all human wants and needs.  The critique usually does not distinguish, as Bauwens, Bollier, et al do, the important distinction between the material and the immaterial: "the false idea of immaterial scarcity" AND "the false idea of material abundance." Both of the pieces of this puzzle are VERY important to consider together, IMO. 

I also like the move to "cooperative individualism" as the middle way between capitalism and collectivism. It's the unity in diversity idea rather than a totalitarian unity. 

[andrew]

Agreed! These ideas are very much consistent with themes that i espouse . 

We ( the global populace) might also want to consider the idea of a 'time-out'! When children behave badly mature healthy adults call for a time-out . Mythic scripture called for periods of time-out ! Most outdoor sports games call timeout when conditions become untenable . All factions of society need to consider the idea of a timeout for a few generations and work together to find solutions to complex problems that may become more lethal (terminal) than they already are . 

Last weeks Hajj travesty is a cautionary tale on carrying capacity .

[andrew]

A note on green-washing : the corporate takeover of the environmental movement is not going to solve anything . A car free day in Paris although fine in itself is not going to solve anything when juxtaposed to a massive global system of salesmanship of the status-quo with its imperialistic colonist mindset . Although not a perfect simile, i might compare this with how Pablo Escobar gave up a certain amount of coke to the authorities while shipping in 99% more than what he conceded to the police . The corporate structure as it presently exists needs to be dismantled and a new way of trading goods and services reinstalled .

[Edward theurj Berge]

On FB IPS Bauwens also linked to this video presentation:

[andrew]

I'd be interested in the Integral conscious capitalist's response to these ideas . Why they are not practical or implementable from their perspective . 

I think it also worthwhile to see how the corporate/financial elite gained ascendency in the last 100 years . It appears that they have manufactured the consent of 20% of the population via differing methods . Recently , turning homeowners into millionaires at the expense of life systems ( in my view this has created a culture of narcissistic entitlement ). Also, as I've mentioned : acquiring consent by creating a sports and entertainment elite . The giant squid Wall St. media machine , too. 

[Edward theurj Berge]

As I noted to Bauwens at FB:

Actually I'm one of the few within the integral movement that is interested in the neo-Commons. Weird, I know, since it is integral to the core. I guess since there's no official integral modeling involved it is overlooked? That modeling seems to be their answer for everything.

[andrew]

Well, there are still a least a billion folks who are never going to sign off on capitalism : 

http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2014/11/i-wish-this-changed-everyth...

This is my point in the Zeitgeist thread . Two ( or more) economies because of the reality that people love this system; but the greater reality is that the carrying capacity of modern capitalism was probably around 1940 ( as far as population and overreach) . I also factor in freewill in my system and only modify it by passing laws that keep individuals from behaving badly ecologically . But yes, I understand that capitalism , in theory, can't stop even if it wanted to . 

But that still leaves about 5 billion that could be persuaded into a grassroots neo-commons ; although i could never see the bad actors of the capitalist status quo not infiltrating and undermining . It's a part of what they do .

[andrew]

On those meddling capitalists : 

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176048/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_a_s...

[DavidM58]

It occurred to me while listening to the audio of Balder's ITC 2015 presentation that his emphasis on "integral indwelling," "co-presence," "entanglement," etc. could be made to be very supportive and in alignment with more cooperativist (or neo-Commons) socio-political-economy structures.

And I think this is also consistent with Gebser's expectation of integral consciousness.

Just yesterday I was reading from “American Philosophies of Religion,” written by Henry Nelson Wieman and his former student Bernard Meland. Written in 1936, during the Great Depression and in that period between 1914 and 1945 that Scott Preston names as “the dismantling of the modern project,” and which Peter Pogany calls the chaotic transition between Global System 1 (laissez faire) and Global System 2 (regulated capitalism).

Wieman and Meland at that time outlined 5 distinctive cultural problems: 1) “a great increase of economic goods ,but produced under the control of social customs which make it impossible for the great majority of people to have abundant access to them.” 2) “Great increase in power of achievement but no cause sufficiently dominant to draw all this power into its service.” 3) “an increase in the materials and opportunities for happiness without standards adequate to guide us in our choices and appreciations.” 4) “a great increase of interdependence but without integrating loyalties, habits and sentiments which would enable us to live together cooperatively and in creative community.” 5) “A drift toward collectivism with the danger of diminishing seriously our personal freedom…By personal freedom we here mean the stimulus and the opportunity to exercise individual initiative, to think for one’s self, to experiment, criticize, invent, not necessarily machines but ways and devices for living…such freedom and uniqueness of individuality will destroy culture, especially in our modern world, with its delicate and intricate interdependence, unless each individual so functions as to stimulate the individuality of others and contribute the expression of his own individuality to the enrichment of the life of all…”

“Perhaps this is the most serious problem we face at this turning point in history when the old individualism is being driven out by necessity. Can a new individualism be developed, an individualism in which the needed harmony and community is sustained by integrating loyalties and sentiments so that there need be no permanent suppression of individuality by regimentation?…”

“Nothing can do it except a great religion adequate to our time…The primary need is for a widespread interest among great numbers of people in this problem of finding what is essential and fundamental in the passing forms of religion and holding fast to that when new forms are developing. Great numbers of people must become inquirers in religion and not merely passive believers.”

They then proceed to quote C.G. Jung: ‘Among all my patients in the second half of life…there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life…Every one of them has the feeling that our religious truths have somehow or other grown empty.’ (quote from Modern Man in Search of a Soul).

Wieman and Meland then conclude this section:
“These facts would seem to make plain that we must have a religion adequate to our time, else we cannot go on…

“The task that this situation imposes, however, is a sobering one in the light of the diversity of views and interests in the field of philosophy of religion today. For when differences become too marked and fundamental, concerted effort in dealing with this constructive problem is measurably frustrated, if not precluded. And the difficulty becomes accentuated when those holding varying views turn a deaf ear to one another’s reasoning, or stiffen at the approach of another’s thoughts…If the present work can contribute toward a fuller understanding of the contemporary quests for truth, and increase the degree of mutual appreciation among their proponents, it will at least be a step toward achieving the larger, constructive task that confronts religious thinkers today.”

Wieman and Meland above seem to be hinting at a middle way between capitalism (individualism) and communism (totalitarian collectivism), this middle way being cooperativism, which is well articulated in this excerpt of the new book, “The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State.” (Thanks to theurj for sharing this link earlier in the thread)
http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/peer-peer-economy-and-new-civil...

theurj said:

As I noted to Bauwens at FB:

Actually I'm one of the few within the integral movement that is interested in the neo-Commons. Weird, I know, since it is integral to the core. I guess since there's no official integral modeling involved it is overlooked? That modeling seems to be their answer for everything.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Indeed, I've always appreciated Balder's participatory turn in that regard. Bauwens has even quoted Balder regarding participatory spirituality in "The next Buddha will be a collective." And you're right that the neo-Commons is more in line with a Gebserian integrality than the kennilingus variety. And the Pope is on the right track for an integral religion.