Curious note of natural delicacy: they never excluded me from any of the possible permutations and combinations, or ever expected me to be a mere voyeur. And nothing I did, even though a total stranger from another country, seemed to take them aback: they’re maybe 22 or so, but they don’t seem surprisable by anything men do.
It was an exhausting night; left me feeling lightheaded. Toward dawn I got dressed and walked all the way across the city to the Cove, listening to the fog horns and thinking about Marissa. Though I have twinges of jealousy about her, her behavior after the war games and mine this evening seem parallel and equal in some odd way. I don’t feel guilty, anyway.
Once home, I scribbled a note to Francine, offering her diplomatic immunity and telling her about my escapade, and fell asleep. In the morning I tore up the note, and got back to work.
WORKERS’ CONTROL, TAXES,
AND JOBS IN ECOTOPIA
San Francisco, May 28. Is the Ecotopian economy socialist? I asked a high government spokesman this question. I told him that it is widely considered to be so, by Americans, but that obviously the information gap of recent decades made a clear understanding difficult. This gentleman gave me a polite lecture, making it clear that he was speaking to what he considered the major American confusions.
The Ecotopian economy, he began, must be considered a mixed one, like that of the United States; but some elements of the mix are novel, and because of ecological and political considerations the balance of the mix is quite different. Not long after Independence, he reminded me, there was a massive flight of capital, similar to what happened after the Cuban revolution. Most families of great wealth fled, going either to Los Angeles, to the East, or in some cases to their Swiss or French estates. This undoubtedly damaged the managerial capabilities of Ecotopian enterprises, he admitted, though the total number of such refugees was only a few thousands, including women and children.
The Ecotopian government, faced with the necessity of feeding, housing, and clothing its population, at first teetered between a cautious attempt to carry on enterprises on the old lines, and breaking through into new and uncharted methods.
But as it happened, my informant argued, in a few months it became clear they had no real choice; for the people, seeing the former owners depart, realized that a new era was indeed upon them and began spontaneously taking over farms, factories, and stores. This process was chaotic, but it was not anarchic; it was controlled by the local governments and local courts. The assumption was usually made that those who had been working in the organization “owned” it; and since they had no other means of support, their immediate problem after Independence was to go on running it pretty much as it had been run. There were, he pointed out, some examples to go on, of enterprises taken over by employees in France in the late sixties, and of course a number of U.S. corporations had become employee-owned by purely legal and gradual means.
Such take-overs set the tone for the ongoing tasks of production and distribution of essentials; and they worked. But more massive and deliberate economic changes soon took place, above all in the diversion of money and manpower toward the construction of stable-state systems in agricultural and sewage practices, and in the scientific and technical deployment of a new plastics industry based upon natural-source, biodegradable plastics. (The transportation system, which remains an infringement on the stable-state principle, also consumed many resources in that period.)
I inquired about the sources of government revenue for such large-scale projects. The tax system of former years, it seems, was entirely abandoned at the time of Independence. Laws formalizing the forfeiture of property by owners, plus confiscatory inheritance taxes, were legislated. (Aside from personal articles, no Ecotopian can now inherit any property at all!)
Ecotopian revolutionaries took the position, which still appears to prevail, that a little-recognized yet fundamental defect of capitalism is that you cannot tax its owners justly—for wealth under capitalist governments always manages to provide sufficient tax loopholes for itself. The new tax system, upon which Ecotopian government now depends, relies entirely on what we would call a corporation tax—that is, a tax upon production enterprises (including individual craftsmen, incidentally). It is based partly upon net income, but also partly upon “turnover,” or gross income. Like most functions of governing, tax-levying is carried out by the communities (mainly cities), which delegate very limited powers to the regional or national levels.
The reasoning behind this system, according to my informant, is complex, but it turns upon the view that all taxes are fundamentally a means of the government seizing a share of economic output and putting it to publicly determined purposes—and that this seizure should therefore be at the immediate source, simple, understandable, just, and open to public view. (Ecotopian tax returns are not confidential, as with us.)
In recent years, this tax policy has been complemented by laws that have redefined the position of the employee—very drastically from an American viewpoint. The workers in an Ecotopian enterprise must now all be “partners”; a man cannot just set up a business, offer wages to employees, fire them when he no longer needs them, and pocket whatever profits he can make. Grotesque as it may seem, all Ecotopians who join an enterprise now do so on the same sort of basis as our high executives. Just as these gentlemen inquire about profit-sharing, stock options, tax shelters, retirement plans, and so on, so do ordinary Ecotopians inquire about the partnership terms in an enterprise they are considering joining!
There are no personal income, sales, or property taxes in Ecotopia, though there is a land tax that encourages concentration and probably accounts for the remarkable compactness of Ecotopian cities. There is a widespread aversion to other types of tax on the grounds that they are either regressive or promote divisiveness among people—whereas the enterprise tax, bearing as it does on collective groups, is thought to promote solidarity. (A paradoxical notion, perhaps, since these groups compete with each other strenuously enough.)
It is alleged, though of course this would be extremely difficult to prove, that there is no super-rich class in Ecotopia. It is admitted that certain occupational groups, such as artists and scientists and some doctors, have slightly higher incomes, though national training policies deliberately seek to keep such differentials moderate. But there are now said to be no individuals in Ecotopia who grow personally rich because they control means of production and hire other men’s labor power. Occasionally, however, strange anomalies occur—when an enterprise comes up with some remarkable product or service for which there is an immediate and strong demand. The inventors and fabricators of the “bird-suits,” for instance, are a small research collective, originally about 30 people. Because of the appeal of their ingeniously insulating garments, they are said to have made a great deal of money recently, even though they have now chosen to take in some new members and to work even less than the usual 20 hours per week.
Don’t such successful groups use their profits to control other enterprises, or become absentee owners, and thus end up as capitalists just like ours? The answer on this point was complex, but seems to boil down to the fact that direct absentee investment by one enterprise or person in another enterprise is not permitted. Surpluses can thus only be “invested” by lending them to the national banking system, which in turn lends funds to enterprises. This arrangement, which resembles the one pioneered by the Yugoslavs in the seventies, obviously gives the bank an immense leverage on the economy, and makes possible the sometimes surprisingly large public investments that have characterized Ecotopian development. (The most it allows lucky producers, like the bird-suit people, is the chance to retire and live off the interest their profits can earn from the bank.) This process clearly needs close study by our economists; it appears to contradict many Ecotopian protestations of decentralization, even if the national bank does maintain regional branches which are said to have great autonomy.
Ecotopian enterprises generally behav
e much like capitalist enterprises: they compete with each other, and seek to increase sales and maximize profits, although they are hampered by a variety of ecological regulations. I suspect they are not immune to a certain amount of chicanery and false claims about their products.
However, the fact that the members of an enterprise actually own it jointly (each with one vote) puts certain inherent limits on what these enterprises do. For instance, they do not tend to expand endlessly, since the practical maximum size of a joint-ownership firm seems to be fewer than 300 people—beyond that they tend to break down into bureaucratic, inflexible forms and lose both their profitability and their members, who seek more congenial environments. “Small is beautiful,” I was reminded. Also, the enterprises tend to be just as concerned with conditions of work as they are with profits, and in many instances members seem willing to accept lower profit and wage levels in exchange for a comfortable pace of work or a way of organizing work which offers better relations among the people doing it.
Competitive threats from other enterprises keep such laxity within bounds, but even so some Ecotopian products are utterly noncompetitive with the products of more efficient industries abroad. The prices of clothes and shoes outside the core stores, for example, are sky-high and draconian tariffs are used to keep out the sweat-shop products from Asia—the consequence being that many Ecotopians wear homemade garments, which has by now become considered a virtue.
It is impossible to assess the relative tax burden of Ecotopia, since taxes fall only upon enterprises. However, since the Ecotopian arms establishment is small (about the size of Canada’s) and many functions of government which for us are very costly (such as education) are organized, strangely enough, on free-market principles, it seems certain that the relative total tax burden is much lower than ours. This may of course help to explain why the drop in Gross National Product after Independence did not agitate the population more.
The tax revenues are used by the community governments to support their recycling services, housing, power, water, telephone, medical services, police, courts, and so on. A pro rata share of tax funds goes to the regional and national governments, to support operation of larger-scale systems such as the trains, defense, telecommunications, and most of the research establishment.
Curiously, despite the importance Ecotopians attach to agriculture and other rural affairs, the Ecotopian constitution is city-based where ours, inherited from an agricultural era, is rural-based. With us, the states have broad powers over cities (including the right to give them legal existence and set their boundaries). The Ecotopian main cities, however, dominate their regions through a strict application of one-person-one-vote principles. Furthermore, the county level of government is omitted entirely.
This curious system evidently leads to continual conflict and jealousy over the disposition of tax revenues. Instead of relying on a powerful central tax-collection agency that can attach incomes directly, the central government must continually placate and cajole the local governments to ensure a continued flow of funds. Thus the Ecotopian federal structure, which superficially resembles the small government bodies found under primitive capitalism, makes most of its outlays on uncontroversial activities that benefit all citizens absolutely equally. There is a surprisingly small national welfare system, considering that Ecotopians enjoy a lifetime “guarantee” of minimal levels of food, housing, and medical care. While some citizens, especially those working on untried developments in the arts, utilize this guarantee to exist without jobs (sometimes for years—the envy of our young artists!) most people either feel the guarantee level is too abject to exist on, or find it’s desirable to work in order to provide themselves with a lively social life. The old and disabled, of course, must survive by taking advantage of the guarantee; and by my observation the living standard involved, while low, is perhaps slightly better than that of our Social Security recipients.
Despite the severe criticisms made of the Ecotopian economic and tax system by our experts, direct observation can thus only support the claims of Ecotopian spokesmen, however unwelcome these may be: the system is now a proved and integral part of Ecotopian life, and it is not going to go away.
(May 29) Just reread last couple of columns. Realize that my attitudes toward the place have changed a lot in three weeks. (And it doesn’t seem to be just Marissa!) Am I getting soft in my writing? Maybe I didn’t know what were the really penetrating questions to be asked on that economics stuff. Or maybe I’m even getting some kind of over-all snow job. The whole Ecotopian experiment seemed to me at first a silly provincial attempt to construct a decent society when every place else was going down the drain. From what I had seen of the rest of the world, I knew it couldn’t work, it must be some kind of fraud! I hadn’t believed the rumors about forced labor and stone-age degeneracy and all that crap, but I guess I really did expect to find there was something terribly wrong with it, some obvious horrible flaw which meant that we didn’t after all really have to pay any serious attention to it; and my reports would end up documenting that, would make it all go away….
But it’s not going away. In fact the more closely I look at the fabric of Ecotopian life, the more I am forced to admit its strength and its beauty. But that just leaves me at a total loss. I don’t seem to have an attitude to write from anymore; all I can do is call the individual separate shots as I see them. Is that losing my objectivity? Will Max start cutting my copy? Maybe I don’t really understand anything anymore, or at least not in the way I used to think I did?
Have come out to visit Marissa at the forest camp. Found her deep in the woods, selecting trees for cutting. She let me come along if I wouldn’t talk. She walks slowly through the trees, looking at them all very carefully. Then she’ll sit or stand for a while, meditatively. In time she will walk to this tree and that, attach to each a red ribbon marking its doom, and murmur a phrase I couldn’t catch. Her expression at these moments is sorrowful yet determined. Then she relaxes and we walk on to another tract of forest. This is a major part of her work—but it might as well be a ritual of some kind; there is a holiness to it.
Difficulties have at last begun to arise between her and Everett—he still doesn’t seem to feel triumphed over, as I would in his place, but there has been dark talk about one of them having to leave. (I wish he would—I now find myself terribly jealous of her having anything to do with him.) At supper an argument came up over whether it would be a good idea to re-establish relations with Washington. Rather to my surprise, Marissa strongly in favor, with some ingenious arguments. I got many dirty looks, even though I didn’t say much. Everett is, after all, a member of the family, and I am an interloper.
Was invited along on a provision trip to the nearby town. Four of us, bumping along in a little electric truck. Went to one of the core stores. Apparently the goods in them are produced by automated factories to government specifications. Standardized, very plain though often attractive, and incredibly, astoundingly cheap. Thus socks about a quarter of our prices, but only in black or white; standard plain pants, shirts, underwear similarly priced. I happen to need a new T-shirt, and got two, considering the bargain (saffron color!). Food sections of core stores offer a modest coverage of dried, frozen, preserved items. You could, if you wished, subsist on these for a tiny sum—and I have met a few artists and other oddball types who claim they do, being unwilling to spend their time earning the income needed for better fare. Many Ecotopians, however, seem to buy only bread, beans, rice, fruit and similar staples from these stores, relying on small independent shops for meat, produce, etc.—or shipments from fellow communes. (Lumber camp gets its meat, milk and vegetables from a farm commune 15 miles away.)
Standardization is carried amazingly far in the core stores. Preserved foods come in only three sizes of containers (all biodegradable, naturally)—one about the size of a small pickled-herring jar, one like a large jam jar, and one huge, the kind our restaurants get fruits in. These go by metric conte
nts, not our “giant,” “jumbo,” etc. or our intricate can numbers. The labels, however, very lovely in design. And some of the goods have style, like the shoes.
Had lost my hairbrush somehow, and the core stores carry only natural-bristle types. When I said that I wanted a proper plastic-bristle one, my companions looked at me a bit strangely, took me to an “antiquarium.” Turned out to be a special store where you can buy items no longer available in ordinary stores—including, it turns out, many items we sell in drugstores.
(Ecotopian “pharmacies,” as they are called, are cramped little places that sell almost nothing but prescription drugs. The Ecotopian medical profession went through the pharmacopeia after Independence and ruthlessly eliminated many tranquillizers, energizers, sleep-inducers, and other drugs such as cold remedies. In fact they now license no behavior-control drugs at all. Which may have been a contributing factor in reorganizing their schools: unable to make difficult children adapt to the schools, they had to adapt the schools to the children! I asked one doctor what happens with insomnia. “Well, usually this indicates a social problem, not a medical one,” he said. “So we try to help the person change his life rather than his body chemistry, which is probably working fine. Besides, in Ecotopia it can be fun to stay up all night, you know. The 20-hour week has loosened things up a lot.”)
Anyway, the antiquarium was patronized mainly by elderly women and a few rather decadent-looking young people, who laughed a lot and seemed to be looking for campy artifacts. With my plastic brush I got a lecture about it being impossible to recycle because it’s the old type of plastic. “Damn thing will last for hundreds of years,” said the clerk with distaste. Well, I’ll remove it from his precious country when I leave….