Unitarian Church Leadership

[tcpip]

I've spent a bit of time over the past couple of weeks as a candidate for chairperson for the Melbourne Unitarian Church. It wasn't an easy decision; the current chairperson is a convivial chap and has a fair knowledge of the subject matter. But he's also been in that role for a very long time, and, it must be said, he has been less than effective at dealing with some real problems that the place is facing that have been raised time and time again for years on end. It became very clear to me that nothing was going to change unless the leadership changed.

The reality is that the Church is stagnating or declining on all metrics one cares to mention (except for website visits). Membership is aging and declining - the "electoral roll" is a mere 47, down from over 60 when I first joined and average attendance at services is around 25-30. There is no effort at all to bring in new blood, and least of all young people - indeed, there is active discouragement. The content of the overwhelming majority of services and the Church journal is largely indistinguishable from a left-wing political club, making even the purpose of the place completely redundant. The organisation is too top-heavy with a maddeningly inefficient bureaucracy and a tightly controlled concentration of power. Over the past three years the Church has recorded constant financial losses and a decline in equity.

I've gone into all this in my election material for those who want more information on the dire straits the organisation is in, along with some very achievable, measurable pledges of my own. Alas, I do not have soft-copies of the rather hostile and personal responses, which are overwhelmingly based on defending the bleak financial record, with the particular the claim that depreciation isn't an issue as it is just a 'paper loss', a claim, I must confess, simply astounds. Mostly however, I cannot fathom what the incumbents stand for. More of the same? It'll become a race to see who dies first; the incumbents or the organisation - and nothing will be left for the future.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It's a common feature I've seen among many members of the political left; an interpretation that because capitalism is unjust then therefore accounting and economics can be equally condemned. Trotsky, a little smarter on such matters than many of his contemporaries had some harsh words to say on the subject.

Economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations...

If a universal mind existed, of the kind that projected itself into the scientific fancy of Laplace – a mind that could register simultaneously all the processes of nature and society, that could measure the dynamics of their motion, that could forecast the results of their inter-reactions – such a mind, of course, could a priori draw up a faultless and exhaustive economic plan, beginning with the number of acres of wheat down to the last button for a vest. The bureaucracy often imagines that just such a mind is at its disposal; that is why it so easily frees itself from the control of the market and of Soviet democracy. But, in reality, the bureaucracy errs frightfully in its estimate of its spiritual resources....


The innumerable living participants in the economy, state and private, collective and individual, must serve notice of their needs and of their relative strength not only through the statistical determinations of plan commissions but by the direct pressure of supply and demand. The plan is checked and, to a considerable degree, realized through the market. The regulation of the market itself must depend upon the tendencies that are brought out through its mechanism. The blueprints produced by the departments must demonstrate their economic efficacy through commercial calculation.

-- Leon Trotsky, "Soviet Economy in Danger", New York, 1933.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

In Mr Trotsky's case, of course, this sentiment is overwhelmingly a matter of hindsight being 20/20. Only about ten years earlier he had been a staunch opponent of the NEP, perhaps because of the requirements of his job as Commissar of War.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think you're right. The circumstances of war generate very different economic conditions where market relations and commercial calculation are not entirely appropriate. It also generates pretty miserable consumer conditions..

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

They did call it War Communism for a reason; that said, there was a fairly extensive and legitimate ambiguity among the Bolshevik leadership regarding whether or not War Communism should in essence become permanent and form the basic structure of the future Soviet economy. (The confusion is pronounced because different people say slightly different things about what Trotsky's precise position was at any given time during the deliberations.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well certainly Bukharin thought it should be permanent - but then he changed his mind and favoured the NEP. Oh, how opportunity presents itself! At least with Trotsky he certainly took into account the legitimate criticisms of planning mechanisms from people like von Mises. I never got the sense that Bukharin supported War Communism or the NEP for other than entirely political reasons; although I may be wrong. I am no expert on his economic reasoning..

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, Bukharin presents me with such a problem! On the other hand he's a prodigal economic and theoretical writer, with occasional bouts of practically doctrinaire stubbornness (as with Trotsky, the Brest-Litovsk debate is probably the crowning example of this), and on the other hand he's also a consummate party careerist and day-to-day political strategist.