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Can we do it ourselves?

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A documentary about the possibility of a democracy in the economic institutions.





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  1. CláudiaSeptember 21, 2017 at 10:07 AM

    For Gabriel: Noam Chomsky participates in the movie!

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  2. Gabriel J. Gil PérezSeptember 21, 2017 at 11:03 AM

    Great, Claudia! I am very happy that the blog is not dead... but latent. I will bounce back, once I watch the documentary. Besides... there were some ideas hanging in the drafts that are worth re-taking. (By the way, I read Syntactic Structures by Noam Chomsky in the summer: magnificent!)

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  3. CláudiaSeptember 21, 2017 at 12:49 PM

    Looking forward for your suggestions!

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  4. Gabriel J. Gil PérezOctober 22, 2017 at 4:59 AM

    I just finished the documentary today. I am sorry for the huge delay in feedback...
    Anyhow... it was quite interesting and illuminating for me to watch discussions about democracy outside political institutions. I see now that politics could be key to achieve democracy as a whole, of course, but there are certain liberties that even with the political will of empowering people (or granting welfare policies) might lag behind.
    In the documentary, they focus on these liberties as the main consequence of adopting an economic democracy framework. I believe this is so simply because the discussion is driven by intellectuals living in capitalist economies. Now, I was first introduced to this topic of workers controlling enterprises by a professor back in Havana. (I am passing this documentary to him as soon as I get back to Cuba). Even though, he is a physicist, he has developed a quite compelling case in favor of economic democracy model (without the terminology, I guess) within socialism, where the stress is not in the liberties gain by workers (since socialism guarantee most of them) but in the increased efficiency of the new scheme. So, it is more like a correction to socialism than a correction to capitalism. I really wonder if economic democracy can do both... (And this remembers me to a friend that once took a hunch leap and said that, even though pursuing different goals, capitalism and socialism will asymptotically approach one another).
    In any case, in the model by the Cuban professor it is the workers that nominate and elect the management of the enterprises (N.B.: no ownership and no capital investors in socialism...), and they have the right of removing a manager from seat as well, however collectively. But notably, the profits of the enterprise is shared equally (or with an a priori criteria) between its workers, plus a contribution to the state. Therefore, in the new scheme, a manager -he says- has always "a Damocles sword" on top of him that will guide him to take better decisions in the interest of the workers. In current socialist enterprises (leaving out probably, China... I guess), it is the state who delegates the management into a person (or group) that responds to it (not to the workers). Efficiency is not prioritize since the profit goes to a central government and then it should be shared at a higher level of society (not within the enterprise).
    Anyhow, I really do not think that the latter is the only fix-up we need but it is probably the one without political cost. If there is empirical evidence that economic democracy model company -apart from the welfare benefits- can be as efficient as the less efficient company within capitalism, I think it is worth to consider it within socialism as well.
    Hereby, I return your serve, Claudia. So keep it bouncing ;) .

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