The Economy in Microcosm

'A Long History of a Short Block'

 by Brian Bamford

IN a recent essay in the FT Weekend Magazine Tim Harford, the undercover economist, wrote that 'the nation state is a political unit, not an economic one', and while 'national authorities can impose a common interest rate, tax rates and regulations' through which political policy influences the economy, it can be argued that the natural unit of macroeconomic analysis is not the nation state, but the city, the region, and the surrounding areas.   

In posts on this NV Blog Les May has argued about the necessity of a National Health Service and national, if not international, standardisation of electrical supply such as equal voltages.  John Desmond has argued that a more local system would be possible in certain circumstances referring to Spanish sources  (see below Review of Anarchist Voices by Les May and other related posts).
New research by three development economists, William Easterly, Laura Freschi and Steven Pennings has produced a paper 'A Long History of a Short Block' in which they examined the economic development of a single 486ft. block of Greene Street between Houston and Prince Street in downtown Manhattan.  Easterly is well known for his scepticism about how much development can ever be planned, and how much credit can political leaders and their so-called expert advisers claim when things go well. 

William Easterly argues:

'Here's a block where there is no leader; there's no president or prime minister of this block', and Greene Street, he says, offers us a perspective on the more spontaneous, decentralised features of economic development.   

The study of the history of Greene Street offers a series swift and surprising changes.  The Dutch colonised Manhattan in 1624, but decided to cede what is now New York to the British in 1667, in exchange for guarantees over the possession of what is now Suriname in Latin America.  At that time this sugar-rich region looked a good thing, but now New York City's economy is a hundred times bigger than Suriname's. 

In 1850, Greene Street was a prosperous residential district with some households that would be millionaires by today's standards.  Two large hotels and a theatre opened, and prostitutes started to  move into the area.  By 1870, the middle-classes had shifted, and the block became the heart of New York City's largest sex-work districts. 

Towards the end of the 19^th century, perhaps because property values in the red-light area were low, entrepreneurs came in to build large cast-iron stores and warehouses for the garment trade.  Then Greene Street's luck ran out when this industry moved uptown after 1910, and property values collapsed.  Urban planners in the 1940s and 1950s suggested bulldozing the area and starting again, but a campaign by the neighbourhood successfully resisted this.  Property values revived as artists began to colonised Greene Street enticed-in by the low priced large and airy spaces.   

As a lesson of this Tim Harford suggests that getting the 'basic infrastructure right –  streets, water, sanitation, policing – is a good idea', but 'aggressive planning, knocking down entire blocks in response to temporary weakness, is probably not.'   In this sense central planning and predicting the process of economic development at a local level is 'a game for suckers'. 

The possibility of anarchist healthcare

John Desmond

LES May asks eight questions in his response to my post. I hope that he doesn’t mind if I confine myself to answering only seven questions that are answerable in this blog. The question that isn’t answerable is whether a model for the provision of healthcare that is based upon local organizations would provide better healthcare than the NHS model.  Unfortunately, this question isn’t answerable because it implies too many variables. In short, it is too complex. That said; I am genuinely grateful to Les May for raising his questions because answering them has required me to test robustly my ideas.  
The first question is: ‘What advantages did the Tredegar Medical Aid Society have for the people of Tredegar?’  I think that the observation by Paddy French (1999) that I quoted in my previous post affords an answer to this question:  
‘In five decades more and more of Tredegar’s medical services are provided further and further away from the town while control becomes ever more remote.’  
The second, third, fourth and fifth questions are: 
2. ‘Will [the solution of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society] “scale”?’ 
3. ‘does this solution still work when the problem gets larger?’
4. ‘What might it look like here?’
5. ‘What would a network look like?’
Answers to these questions can be drawn from many publications, the large majority of which, predictably enough, appear to relate to Spanish revolutionary anarchism. Two books by a contemporary observer, Gaston Leval (1990, originally 1952: 122-127) and (1975: 268-273), the respected French anarcho-syndicalist, are a useful starting point. In his books, Leval was able to describe only in very broad terms the provision of healthcare for Catalonia, the population for which was then 2.5 million. However, fortunately, Xavier Ferrandis (2014) describes in detail the provision of healthcare in Valencia during the first months of the civil war in his lengthy article (which is available online and translatable with Google Translate). 

The sixth and seventh questions are:
6. ‘Would an organisation like TMAS be able to adapt to our era of “Big Medicine”?’ 
7. ‘Would a network of TMAS be able to provide [scans and knee replacements]?’
Two references about these questions might be helpful. First, Leval (1975) mentioned that ‘the cantonal Comités on the federal principle, had ramifications in Barcelona which had greater technical facilities and specialised establishments, [than the nine large sectors of the region]’ (op. cit.: 269). Second, Iain McKay (2012: 918-920) examines in Volume Two of his encyclopedic ‘An Anarchist FAQ’ the issue about whether technological advance should be seen as anti-anarchistic. By ‘technological advance’, he includes that which relates to medical technology. His examination of the issue elaborates his answer ‘Not necessarily’.  
Of course, my answers would be insufficient without an acknowledgement of the need for a critical mass of people who can be confidently relied upon to organize the provision of anarchist healthcare. Unfortunately, in Britain not only does such a critical mass not exist but also there is no indication of its likely emergence. (So much for the supposed existence of a movement.)  However, the absence of a critical mass need not induce paralyzing pessimism.  Instead, it can afford an opportunity to reflect upon why this negative situation exists, which will require a demanding examination of the past.     

John Desmond


References
Ferrandis, Xavier García. 2014. Anarcosindicalismo y sanidad en la retaguardia y en el Frente. Los casos de Valencia y de la Columna de Hierro en la guerra civil Española (1936-1937). Asclepius. 66 (2): PO63, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2014.27.
French, Paddy. 1999. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Planet The Welsh Internationalist. April/May (134). 35-39.
Leval, Gaston. 1990. The socialisation of health services. In Chapter 7 of ‘The anarchist collectives’. Edited by Sam Dolgoff. Montréal: Black Rose Books.
Leval, Gaston. 1975. Collectives in the Spanish Revolution. Translated from the French by Vernon Richards. London: Freedom Press. 
McKay, Iain. 2012. An Anarchist FAQ: Volume Two. Edinburgh: AK Press.

Anarchist Answers?: Les May on John Desmond

Les May

A few weeks ago someone I had known in the early sixties died. I had read a recent article by him and smiled that he was still the unrepentant Marxist I had known fifty odd years ago.  It was simply an article of faith to him that Marxism was the best political system yet devised.  I don't think that any amount of empirical evidence to the contrary would ever have made him doubt it.

If we search for evidence that libertarian solutions are better than authoritarian solutions, can we find it?  Or is it just an article of faith that they are simply 'better'?

My experience is mixed. They seem to work best when they are spontaneous, have a definite aim and a limited life span. They attract the 'do-ers' not the 'be-ers'.  I have been involved with two of these, one in 1988 and the other in 1995.  One succeeded in its aims, the other didn't.

The Tredegar Medical Aid Society was clearly not a small undertaking if it really did cater for the (then) medical needs of some 20,000 people.  The present population is 15,000 so that figure might be an exaggeration.  That is about the size of town I lived in during the 1960s.  It had a cottage hospital at that time.

Other than the fact that it was not state run and the NHS is, what advantages did TMAS have for the users?  In addition it was not inclusive in that the individual had to join.  My mother was illiterate and poor.  I ask myself would she have joined?

Will this solution 'scale'? I don't mean 'economies of scale' but does this solution still work when the problem gets larger?  I live in a town of about 95,000.  If I add in the two adjacent towns which are administratively included the total is about 200,000. What might it look like here?  What would a network look like? Would it provide better health care than the NHS model?

Would an organisation like TMAS be able to adapt to our era of 'Big Medicine'?
In the 1930s doctors had a very limited range of drugs at their disposal.  Until the advent of sulphonamides, and later antibiotics, there were very few if any antibacterials available. The surgical procedures which were possible were limited.

My brother has had a number of PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography).  My sister and two of my friends have had replacement hips, my brother in law has had a replacement knee...  I'll stop there!  Would a network of TMAS be able to provide this?

So far as I am concerned the 'anarchist' answer to health lies in the hands of each of us; don't smoke, don't drink too much, don't do drugs, don't eat too much and don't sit on your backside all day.

Tell people this and they will complain 'nanny state', but still expect 'nanny' to make them better when they get sick.

Can anyone suggest what a 'libertarian' waste disposal solution would look like for a town like Rochdale?  If it got the unrecyclable waste bin emptied every two weeks not every three weeks it would make 'libertarian' solutions very popular in the town.   

John Desmond Replies to Les May

John Desmond

AT the end of his review (of the journal Anarchist Voices), Les (May) asks ‘What would a Wardian NHS be like’? 
Colin discussed the NHS on pages 13 to 15 of his 1996 book ‘Social Policy’ published by Freedom Press.  He returned to the subject on pages 27 to 29 in his 2004 book ‘Anarchism’.  This book was his contribution to the ‘Very Short Introductions’ series published by Oxford University Press.  In both books, Colin rejected the NHS.  Colin did not write anything remotely similar to the assertion by Jeff Cloves, his obituarist, on page 9 of the 13th March 2010 issue of ‘Freedom’ (71 [4]) that ‘There can be no finer expression of mutuality than the NHS ….’ 
On page 15 of ‘Social Policy’, after discussing the Tredegar Medical Aid Society, Colin asked the question:  ‘Why didn’t the whole country become, not one big Tredegar, but a network of Tredegars?’  On page 28 of ‘Anarchism’, again after discussing the Tredegar Medical Aid Society, Colin expanded upon his question by observing: 
'Anarchists cite this little, local example of an alternative approach to the provision of health care to indicate that a different style of social organization could have evolved.’  
Paddy French echoed Colin’s observation in his little gem of an article ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ about the Tredegar Medical Aid Society on page 37 of the April/May 1999 (134: 35-39) issue of ‘Planet The Welsh Internationalist’:  
‘The society has … watched as local influence on the [NHS] withered away.  In five decades more and more of Tredegar’s medical services are provided further and further away from the town while control becomes ever more remote.’ 

Solution to historical isolation of Freedom Friends

CHRIS Draper and his colleagues deserve the congratulations of all anarchists for their achievement in rejuvenating the ‘Friends of Freedom Press’.  Of course, the mistakes of the past will still need to be revisited, to ensure that they are adequately examined and lessons learned.  However, the focus of attention is now the new group of Friends and the challenges that they face.  Evidently, the new group is not short of problems to resolve.  Indeed, there are so many problems to resolve that the group will need to prioritize them. 

One problem to be resolved is the regrettable historical isolation from anarchism of the previous ‘Friends of Freedom Press’.  The new group can begin to resolve this problem by acknowledging and inviting feedback from other anarchists.  Unfortunately neither of these tasks can be undertaken though the pages of ‘Freedom’ newspaper.  However, the unavailability of this channel of communication should not prevent the new group from creating and maintaining an alternative channel to acknowledge and invite feedback from other anarchists.   

I will resist the temptation of suggesting which problems the new group should prioritize, and the order in which it should prioritize them, because any such suggestion might so easily be inappropriate.  Instead, I express the hope that the new group will be able to count upon receiving all the support possible, as and when the group might want it.  Which brings me to a practical possibility.  Perhaps the new group might welcome the facility of drawing upon a resource pool of anarchists to be available whenever particular types of support could be useful. 

If any of the ‘Friends of Freedom Press’ finds this possibility potentially helpful, I would be very happy to explain my ideas about creating such a resource pool.  

John Desmond

5th July 2015

Freedom newspaper critique by John Desmond

UNFORTUNATELY, I do not know whether all of the contents of Chris Draper’s long-running critique & post-mortem examination of the death of the Freedom newspaper are factually correct. However, in general, they fully accord with my long-held suspicions about the ignominious and inexorable decline of the Freedom Collective, which I arrived at wholly independently of Chris Draper. 

I began to harbour my suspicions about the Freedom Press collective about five years ago; when I realized that it strongly resembled other third sector organizations that I knew, and which I classify as organizational enclaves.  My definition of an organizational enclave is ‘an organization or part of an organization which isolates itself from its external environment’. The data that I adduce to classify the Freedom Press collective as an organizational enclave comprise two sets of back copies of the newspaper, my own set and the skeletal set in the Bodleian Library, and my experiences of the collective. During the last five years, I have refined my concept of third sector organizational enclaves with recourse to the concept of directional discourse, which I define as ‘discourse which is produced in a hierarchy’. In addition, I have written a paper about third sector organizational enclaves.

Obviously, a blog is not an appropriate place in which to reproduce a paper. However, I can very briefly outline its contents. The paper has two functions:
1. it is a framework of analysis that enables the Freedom Press collective to be understood as an organizational enclave
2. it is a matrix into which can be inserted the enclavic behaviours of the Freedom Press collective.

In the paper, I analyse third sector organizational enclaves about three sets of characteristics:
1. the behaviours of their centres of power
2. the mentalities of their centres of power
3. the directional discourse in such enclaves.
i. The centres of power in third sector organizational enclaves establish themselves like any centre of power, clandestinely, with recourse to subterfuge. Once a centre of power is established, it will ensure that the organization ignores its external environment. Moreover, the centre of power will then clandestinely displace the legitimate goal of the organization with the illegitimate goal of protecting its own power. When the centre of power succeeds in its goal, it effectively takes over and, de facto, becomes the organization.
ii. The centres of power of third sector organizational enclaves have three negative mental characteristics. They: a. concentrate upon the internal environment while ignoring the external environment of the organization b. have a low awareness of their situation c. are deluded. Two additional negative characteristics of such enclaves can be inferred from the characteristics just identified. Such enclaves are seedbeds of delusions and are psychologically harmful.
iii. Third sector organizational enclaves imply two types of directional discourse, descending discourse and ascending discourse. The centres of power of such enclaves isolate themselves within the organization by constraining both the descending discourse that they produce and the ascending discourse that is produced by the other people in the organization.

Descending discourse: The centre of power of a third sector organizational enclave constrains its descending discourse about two types of information. First, the centre of power constrains its discourse about the decision-making that occurs in the organization, for example, about who in the organization makes decisions, when they make them and where they make them. Moreover, if the centre of power reveals its decision, it will reveal its decision after the decision has been made. Second, the centre of power constrains its discourse about the external issues that affect the organization.

Ascending discourse: The centre of power of a third sector organizational enclave constrains the ascending discourse that is produced in the organization by proscribing adequate opportunities for the other people in the organization to produce it and by ignoring any ascending discourse that they do produce. Third sector organizational enclaves are the very opposite of anarchist collectives. Consequently, the fact that the Freedom Press collective is classifiable as a third sector organizational enclave begs the extremely perplexing issue about the functioning of the Friends of Freedom Press Ltd. I should be very happy to make a presentation of my paper to the Northern Voices' affinity group and to contribute to a discussion about any issues that might arise from my presentation, for example:
1. the issue about the Friends of Freedom Press
2. the issue about the Freedom Press collective
3. the issue about the death of the Freedom newspaper
4. the issue about where anarchism goes from here.

John Desmond: 31st March 2015