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Coordinatorism is a term for detrimental effects of individuals taking on coordinating roles, as part of any effort at organisation. The problems may be due to the individuals' abuse or negligent use of their power, or simply the natural outcome of such centralising roles. Usually all three elements are present to varying degrees.

Coordinatorism may be associated with any system which contains elements of centralisation, including both the economic practices of communist states during the twentieth century, where the allocation of production and consumption was highly centralised, or the Western economies during the same time frame, where allocation happened to large degree through the market. Coordinatorism is not an alias for any particular governmental system: it can apply to any such system, as well as many others.

Contents 1 Examples of coordinatorism 2 Coordinatorism and volunteering 3 Practical methods for minimising coordinatorism 4 See also 5 External links

In a capitalist setting, coordinatorism by government may violate private property rights, i.e. the supposed rights of those who own vast amounts of capital to control production, consumption and allocation of goods, services and roles.

As another example, from a human rights perspective, governmental, or even UN, -coordinatorism can be considered to violate Article 21.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, since coordinatorist systems have typically violated the right of ordinary workers to participate in government, and also Article 23.1 of the same declaration, since free choice of employment is not possible if employees cannot participate in decisions about what work should be carried out, how it should be carried out and coordinated, etc.

From a socialist perspective, coordinatorism fosters injustice in a similar way to capitalism: a small group of powerful individuals controls the means of production and the allocation of resources, while the vast majority of the population (the workers) is not involved in the economic decision-making process. Coordinatorism may also lead to severe inequities (for example, the special treatment and superior products received by Party members in the Soviet Union and elsewhere), which socialists strongly oppose.

From a Marxist and communist perspective, coordinatorism replaces one ruling class with another, by placing the coordinators in the same positions that were once occupied by the capitalists, and thus the exploitation of workers remains.

Groups in the social justice, environmental rights and peace movements mostly consist of volunteers. Although some of these groups reject capitalism, either partially or totally, frequently the attitude of those same groups toward coordinatorism is much more ambiguous. The "NGO" set of groups tends to accept coordinatorism, with salaried coordinators who work on behalf of others rather than transferring their skills; however a more radical, anarchist trend also exists which advocates, and attempts to practice, rejection of any form of coordinatorism.

Practical methods for minimising coordinatorism include consensus decision making, radical transparency, rotation of facilitation roles and day-to-day work roles among individuals, and giving the least experienced in coordination skills full encouragement and time to learn these skills.

The radical economist Robin Hahnel and a co-founder of Z-Magazine, Michael Albert, have recently developed a new economic system which rejects both coordinatorism and capitalism, and tries to give every person as much say in decisions as they are affected by them. They call it Participatory economics.

Economic theories of the composition of the soviet-style societies: new class, state socialism, state capitalism, bureaucratic collectivism, degenerated workers state and deformed workers state.

• General discussion of coordinatorism, from Z-Magazine
• Coordinatorism compared to socialism, from Z-Magazine