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Top Down vs Bottom Up: Time to Reframe theDebate?by Len Krimerman, coordinating editor, GEO - Grassroots Economic Organizing

"The state's supremacy approximates that of the conductor of an orchestra, whomakes no music himself but harmonizes those who in producing it are doing thething intrinsically worthwhile....the national state [should be seen] as just aninstrumentality for promoting and protecting other and more voluntary forms of association, rather than a supreme end in itself."

John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 202-3.

When I was growing up, Hershel, my favorite uncle, once said to me: "Whenanyone gives you a choice between A and B, take C." According to Ross Gandy,Justin Podur, and Bob Stone, we must choose either "state power" or grassrootscontrol from below. Gandy holds that the former is indispensable, though heconcedes that top down transformation leads us down a repressive andbureaucratic path and, therefore, is himself inclined towards Bakuninist base-level organization... against the Jacobins. Podur opts for a bottom up strategyinvolving participatory planning among co-ops as well as cross-border solidarityalong the lines pioneered, e.g., by the Zapatistas, but fails (according to Gandy)to show how this will not be wiped out by hostile ruling classes running nationalstates. Bob's clarifying synopsis of the Gandy and Podur positions in issue #55gives this venerable debate think of Proudhon and Bakunin vs. Marx and Engelsa lively and sharpened contemporary form.

So our grassroots and bottom up efforts need top down state power, though it willdestroy us. What we want participatory democracy and a solidarity economy of grassroots co-ops cannot become more than marginal in world of 200 nationstates. We are thus caught in an intractable dilemma. We must choose betweenA (state power) or B (grassroots democracy), but, by themselves, neither can getus even close to where we want to go. Choosing the first leads us back to thefailed and oppressive Iron Curtain path; choosing the second, makes us easyprey for the US empire and its military, corporate, and cultural hegemony.

Choose C , Hershel might have said. But is there a C out there in this case? Onthe face of it, I'd suggest, there is indeed. Why can we not imagine, for starters, astate or nation that:

- directs much or most of its resources tax revenues, technical, educational, andfinancial expertise into the process of rebuilding from below.

- encourages and supports grassroots groups to shape, or interpret/enact, thepriorities of the overall community (nation/state).

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- includes a chamber constituted by grassroots and non-governmentalorganizations, whose collective voice is of equal or greater importance with thatof any geographically representative Congress.

- whose role, in general, is not to single-handedly establish policy -or or compel

compliance with its self-shaped dictates, but (largely, mainly) to help develop theskills by which, and create the public environments in which, local and grassrootsgroups can resolve their differences and shape policies they find in their commoninterest.

L'etat c'est nous Of course, like Rome or corporate capitalism, this humane or fusion sort of statecannot be built overnight. But it seems to me a genuine option, one that wouldavoid the dead end horns of (a) using repressive and bureaucratic means toreach a future ideal society where robust and diversity-embracing democracyblossoms, and (b) relying entirely on resource-poor and (often) politically

impotent citizen-based initiatives to offset (much less displace) institutions andorganizations whose vast wealth and power is matched only by their capacity tounleash greed and domination.

Genuine, but not easy. Conceivable, approachable, but no rose garden.Fortunately, what George Benello once called working models do exist: thinkhere of Emilia-Romagna's blend of pro-active government intervention(supporting child care centers, building housing for workers, providing marketingand other technical asisstance to strengthen local enterprise) and a cooperativeflexible manufacturing network economy. Or the replications throughout thesoutheastern region of Brazil of the Porto Alegre participatory budget process,

conceived and engineered by the Workers Party, whose candidate, Lula, hasfinally won election to the presidency of this country. (Would that these Italian andBrazilian initiatives were combined!) And of course, the World and RegionalSocial Forums provide cross-national examples of emerging horizontal alliances.Beyond these, much of what G. D. H. Cole wrote almost a century ago aboutguild socialism, with its multiplicity of associations selecting their own member-delegates rather than relying on political representatives, speaks to ways of getting beyond the dilemma's usual and narrow pair of suspects. So does JohnDewey's attack, in the work quoted above, on the traditional doctrine of exclusivenational sovereignty. And so do two very recent books Tom Atlee's The Tao of Democracy and Archon Fung and Erik Wright's, Empowered Participatory Governance , both of which concretely illuminate fresh forms of democraticgovernance that colonize the state in ways that begin at least to provideresources and influence to local and grassroots organizations.

Of course we will all need to invent our own site-specific forms of robustdemocracy, but there is no shortage, given the above, of conceptual as well aspractical guideposts that can light our path.

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Social change movements, have long debated whether society should betransformed using state power or rebuilt from below in the shell of the old. (RossGandy) Which foot goes first, state power or grassroots economics? (Bob Stone)Perhaps this debate has gone on too long. There is no one single form of thestate, nor of grassroots democracy. Such a skeletal dichotomy need not, should

not, present us with any intractable dilemmas or force us to choose sides;indeed, it seems like a weapon devised to divide and conquer the myriad formsof creative and effective resistance. As such, it can only retard our efforts to birththat new world Arundhati Roy has told us she can already hear breathing.

Better perhaps to start building our many roads with bridges linking centralistsand decentralists, those who would colonize the state with grassroots insurgents,those working within and those building outside of the (current) state. To do this,we need to reject the classical vertical debate between statists and solidarists,top down and bottom up strategies, etc., and reframe it horizontally: that is, sothat we focus on what sort of state, or form of governance, would most embody

and support our grassroots initiatives; and, more broadly, would most reflect asociety with a place for every human gift and voice.