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Edition 05: 16 June, 2007
De Morais' Keynote speech at the Manchester Conference
of 23rd March 1998 "Learning from
(p.31-35) Whatever plans are drawn up for the
reintegration of the masses excluded into the mainstream economy have to take
an approach with large (massive) numbers of participants because this is the
only way in which the problem, which is equally massive, can be tackled. No use
relying on the promotion of the classical micro enterprise and the family
enterprise models because it is precisely this type of enterprises which
have... massively disappeared and are at the heart of the problem in the first
place.
This reintegration must not confine itself to
the distribution of the means of production (land, equipment and work-tools)
but be principally based in the commonly pooled resource which is the
organization of the (always large) group of workers themselves in the form of a
cooperative enterprise for the production of goods and services and in other
forms of community or membership association enterprises.
In order to realize those objectives it is
necessary to set up vast programmes of massive formation of large groups and
their capacitation. At the same time as this entrepreneurial capacitation with
mass participation, thousands of production and service delivery projects need
to be identified, capable of increasing the job and income prospects of the
excluded as well as the family income of the rural and urban small producers.
How is this large group capacitation effected:
by means of the Organizational Workshop method which was used in the course of
the last decades in several locations by the United Nations Organizations in
Latin America, Africa, and also
What is known as the "Field" OW is
being used in particular for the direct establishment of cooperative and
membership enterprises for the production of goods and services.
The "Course" OW, on the other hand is
used in the formation of the veritable armies of the pettifoggers of the
economy who will later be of great use in the identification, at the local
level of the community, of project profiles, as well as of the Programmes for
the Formation of Trainers.....TDE's (Experts in Economic Development).
The TDE's, in turn will go on forming their
local counterparts, the APIs (Programme Assistants) who originate from inside
the communities, at the district, village and neighbourhood levels.
The APIs, formed in the use of the conceptual
categories of the economy will be very useful in the translation of the
projects they identified at the local level in the rural and urban areas into
the language of the financiers and bankers.
The massive capacitation efforts aimed at the
creation of a Social Participation System for the Identification of Job and
Income Generation Projects (SIPGER) culminate in the execution of production
and service provision packages for the reduction of unemployment which affects
the rural population.
THE FORMATION OF WORKSHOP DIRECTORS (FORMACION DE
FORMADORES)
The concept of Formation training of Workshop
Directors only applies in the case of a capacitation process which is conceived
of in massive terms and intended to be applied at the largest possible social
scale. The capacitation which becomes possible thanks to this methodological
principle only operates effectively in the context of geuinely all-encompassing
(globalizing) projects. This is to say that the project has been designed with
global and not merely partial objectives in mind.
So for example, if it is found necessary that
3000 producers be provided with courses in cooperative organisation and
administration the corresponding project will be conceived in such a manner
that it actually will be able to cope with the capacitation of a massive group
of 3.000 persons.
To this objective of the capacitation of 3.000 people
must be geared the principal elements which make up the concept and elaboration
of a project:
-size
-locality
-programme of functioning
-cost analysis
-social impact assessment
-investments
-budget estimates, etc
And it can only be in this manner, with overall
collaboration on a grand scale, that is to say with an all-encompassing
Project, that a substantial Technical Division of Work can be achieved. A most
important element of this global approach are the commonly pooled (indivisible)
Resources (ie means of transport held in common, audio-visual equipment held in
common, teams for the printing, illumination and reproduction of materials
etc), in other words, anything and everything which is held by the enterprise
in common pool and which cannot be divided among its members).
It is the common pool which imposes regulation
and rhythm on the production process. It equally introduces a necessary
discipline on all those who are involved in the Project, be they donors or
beneficiaries, trainers (mentors) or trainees.
Two big advantages are derived from the
introduction of a common pool:
-only resources held in common can assure that
a massive group of 3000 people can be capacitated in the same place at the same
time
-the existence of a common pool also capacitates the donors, as they are
transformed from being sponsors and functionaries supporting isolated ventures
which serve them into interrelated workers at the service of the project.
From the perspective of the ideological
behaviour of the Artisan (that is to say, those who use their hands or, in the
case of intellectuals, their minds in isolated, small scale production
ventures) a global, massive or all-encompassing approach to a number of
predetermined activities has to be viewed from the multiplier effect
perspective. If we only think in terms of an effect, the pursuit of mere
effects would be at the mercy of the caprice or opportunism of the different
participants. The reason for this is that those thinking in terms of micro
projects with small groups (of Artisans) inevitably are only able to think of a
division of work in subjective terms to be adapted to the limited horizon of
the individual capacity and narrow interests of the operator.
Compared to this small scale,
individualistic/-ised perspective of micro projects, the global and
mass-participation approach will inexorably lead to the build-up of an
objective organization (for the production of goods or the provision of
services) and designed or already installed, ready for operation: it is this
objective organisation that the individual operator (office worker or field
worker) will have to adapt to, even more so if it is the organization which
will effectively change the ideological behaviour of the isolated operator
(also known as artisan) into the ideological behaviour of the worker operating
in a social context.
In short, it is here that the behaviour of the
functionaries who, because they are artisans, put the Institution at their
service, changes into that of social operators (the Worker) who serve the
institution.
As long as no objective conditions are created
which are conducive to this fundamental change in (social) consciousness, the
course directors (or the OW) will not be conducting a proper capacitation
process and after a few days of routine activities, they will only be too
anxious to see the closure date of the course. By the same token, as long as
there are no global or massively conceived projects it is not possible to count
on an organizational consciousness among the participants which accepts the
existence of indivisible, commonly-held resources of major importance such as,
for example, the Vehicle supply and maintenance centre, the Audio Teams, the
photocopying and typing Pools, etc.
The necessary transformation in consciousness
(of the workers and donors alike) is a social achievement which cannot possibly
be induced by means of mainstream educational methods, through lecture, through
verbal communications, through pep-talks, speeches and the like. The new social
consciousness is clearly the product of a new social existence, of a new
organizational practice which is imposed by the collaboration, on a massive
scale, inside the global projects of large group capacitation.
From there we conclude that for those Massive
Projects to function well, two conditions of structural transformation need to
be complied with:
-the absolutely necessary incorporation of nuclei into
the development process
- the enhancement of the level of organizational consciousness which, while
advancing slowly but systematically, must replace the reiterative practice of
the "rites of bureaucracy" with a practice in which persons produce,
form and transform themselves.
The Globalizing Projects, in the way they were
rigorously put in operation in the self-managing FAO-sponsored enterprises in
the Honduras of the mid-seventies (see document 3 below) and as they are at
present in operation in the PROGERs in Brazil, allow the educator to educate,
the formator to form (formar al formador) the capacitator to capacitate
(capacitar al capacitador) the trainer to train in the common venture of the
transfer of experiences as well as to take a correct approach at the level of a
national process of structural transformation which is born out of a vision
aimed at providing workplaces and income, on a social scale, to the excluded in
the rural and urban areas.
Without the capacitation of the capacitator and
without the formation of the formator (sin capacitar el capacitador y sin
formar el formador) during the Course-type Organizational Workshops it will be
impossible to obtain the cadres with the necessary organizational consciousness
which can only be found in a large-scale enterprise in the context of an
overall transformation of the socio-economic development landscape./...../
/..../THE METHODOLOGICAL STEPS OF THE OW
The methodological steps which attempt to
achieve the experimental and intentional repetition of the mode of capacitation
which is an inherent part of the objective activity (Leont'ev) are rigorously
conditioned by the intensity with which the social division of labour is
applied and by the nature of the means of production. The reason being that, in
the area of production, organization always starts with a division of labour
and with the centralization of the key functions both in the economic sphere
and in the wider world of social life. Said intensity (which can be reached at
the level of the socially divided production process) will be intimately in
function of the value of the indivisible commonly pooled resources (insumos
indivisibles) expressed principally as fixed capital (installations, machinery
and equipment). The very indivisible nature of those commonly pooled resources
determines the undivided operation to which many hands conjointly contribute
and, by so doing, produce the configuration of the cooperative activity.
When indeed indivisible means of production
form an integral part of the production process, such as, for example,
machinery and installations which are collectively owned, or which are merely
loaned under the principle of a common usufruct (i.e. for their use value, not
their private ownership value), then the group will feel persuaded to utilize
those inputs in precisely that manner, namely as common pool resources, and not
as resources which belong to any one member of the group in particular. This is
an eminently important factor, as it is principally the machinery which
constitutes the fundamental premise, the objective factor which is responsible
for the particular production processes introduced by capitalism, namely social
production riding on collective activity. From whatever perspective one may
look at it, nowhere does one recognize here the environment of the individual
worker. The specific difference- with the work executed by the individual
worker- is that the individual worker's activity is transmitted to the object.
In the case of complex (workers) production processes, however, it is the
object (the machinery used) which imprints its activity on the raw material
while all that there is left to the worker, is to supervise and to prevent that
the machinery suffers any damage.
Even today, in the technological environments
predating capitalism, i.e. where capital does not constitute the dominant
factor (and which are still so prevalent in the so-called Third World) the
instruments still constitute the interface between Work and Nature. Work here,
is the proactive, initial factor, while nature is the reactive, passive factor.
The instrument of work here is no more than an intermediate factor.
With the emergence of automated/robotized
industrial machinery this prior relationship is turned upside down, since the
instrument is not a mere intermediate factor any more, i.e. it does not perform
a mediating function, but it becomes the very starting pro-active point
(initiating factor) of the relationship. Work (the producer) who, before
starting to use the machinery, was in a position of active and independent
agent, now is reduced to the intermediary position of the machine, and becomes
a mere instrument in the process.
In this fashion, the introduction of automated
machinery in the industrial process, even more so if this machinery is
controlled by capital, will have as effect that human subjectivity becomes
subordinated to the activity of the machine and/or the machine's needs. The
process will have become an end in itself. Indeed, in the technology which came
about as the result of the introduction of automated factory machinery, the
characteristics pertaining to the field of human subjectivity which are so
prominent in the artisan (small scale) production mode, will have as good as
been wiped out, because the machinery, which now takes on the form of the
commonly-pooled resource, tends to substitute itself to human subjectivity from
the moment works ceases to be the initiating, pro-active element of the
interrelationship of technology with nature (or with the object of the work),
and presents itself in an instrumental form.
Human subjectivity will then become a mere
function of the machinery. It will become a thing just as is the machinery. It
is this precise juncture that the labour process loses its natural
characteristics and acquires technical characteristics which cannot be subsumed
in the skill of the labourer, but which rather act as a technical application
of science. And by the mere fact that that rationality, the proper knowledge of
this technology does not reside any more in the worker, but principally outside
the worker, in the machinery, this machinery is now in a position to
domesticate, dominate, and educate the worker in the way it requires (needs).
It is the machinery (the object) which will impose another consciousness,
another psychology, fruit of the new social existence of the worker.
In consequence, self-sufficiency and other
manifestations of subjective activity, which, before, were the initiating
factor of the relationship between technology and nature, is being withdrawn
from the worker who is now being made aware of the modest position of virtually
no more than an instrument, a thing, subordinated to the machinery: an entirely
new set of parameters, of subjective conditions (mostly of an organizational
kind) which impose themselves of the development of the activities.
And in that way, then, for the artisan (small
scale) producer to acquire the characteristics of the worker it is sufficient
to transfer this operator from the initial position (where a direct action on
the object, nature, prevailed) to the intermediary position in the
technological process. In the same manner, from the moment that the production
process is collectivised, be it through the presence of industrial machinery,
or through communitarian forms of organization, the producer is carried from
the initial position of being wholly in control towards the centre of the
production process.
It will be the production process itself which
will dispense of the subjective needs typical of the isolated producer and with
the consequences of this isolation (what we have referred to as the vices of
the artisan mode of production). In the end, what is at work here is a transfer
of the domain of technical knowledge incarnated in the artisan (small worker)
in the use of instruments of work to the machinery and the new organizational
imperatives.
A capacitation with large group participation
method which has as its prime objective to establish the predominance of the
psychological characteristics of the (industrial) worker will of necessity have
to be constructed on the basis of commonly-pooled resources, i.e. the machinery
and the different means used in the production process.
This is, then, in essence, what the
preconceived and intentional practice of the Organizational Workshop of massive
capacitation consists of. In the absence of such capacitation (and we name here
in particular the idealistic methods applied by what is known under the name of
Popular Education which confuses education with capacitation), hardly a dent is
made in the real causes of our present predicament. In the absence of
capacitation, also, all that happens is that effects are mistaken for causes
and that a simplistic and superficial vision will continue to prevail of what,
indeed, is actually needed in the transformation of the social psychological
characteristics of the artisan into that of the complex production worker, a
transformation which, by the way, is of absolute necessity in the high level(s)
of orgnisation which a genuine rural and urban development process requires.
List of attachments
supporting the Model.