Efecto de pH sobre la DQO, COT y SUVA

A coherent and exclusively analysis of this relationship in the proposed types of autonomous housing organisations is not available. However, in Rod Burgess writings on self-help housing an overall view and comments concerning the issue can be found.

For the writer, the idea of having an association of households, who are "free to build" and in control of their production (i.e., being autonomous) is seen as contradictory and

"structurally" limited offer within the capitalist mode of production (Burgess, R., 1982). For him, such an autonomous housing organisation can not be established unless it is accompanied by a genuine economic and social change. As it stands, this would merely be an extension of the exiting system, modelled to serve the partial or overall interests of the dominant system:

"If the State is seen as representing the interests of the various fractions of capital tied to housing and urban development.., and if the relations between these different fractions are seen in terms of domination and subordination, then housing and urban policies will at any one time reflect the interests o f the dominant fraction or fractions." (Burgess, R., 1982, p .88)

According to him Turner's main shortcoming is in his limited view of the subject, and his single-minded concentration on physical and technical aspects of low-income housing production. Accordingly, Turner ignores the presence of underlying social and economic forces at work in the capitabst system, they argue, and fails to take into account the political nature of housing activity within such a system:

"He recommends economic and technical changes of a draconian nature..(while) he is unwilling to contemplate any radical change in the political system., the housing problem was depoliticised by being conceived in terms of natural, spatial and technical data., and less in terms of political, economic and social data, so too is the concept of the State implicit in his work, deprived of any 'real' content; (and also) class contradictions does not exist." (Burgess, R., 1982, pp. 74-75) Turner's repeatedly mentioned case studies fail to take into account the actual level of power and freedom that a community based organisation may expect to have within the overall community structure, H.Harms points out. This is especially valid in the case of developing countries where the local communities are bugged down within a rigid, not-tolerating, dependent capitalist and bureaucratic system. In these circumstances notions such as "user control" and "freedom to build" do not convey any tangible meaning, and hence, are only used to romanticise the harsh reality of the exploitative self-help approach:

romantic overtone.. In fact, people in the popular sector are forced by necessity

to provide for themselves in order to survive..” (Harms, H ., 1976, p.231)

This analysis does not lead writers such as M.Harloe to overlook the apparent benefits of autonomous organisations in providing cheap housing, but they do tend to focus on its exploitative nature and the underlying reasons behind its emergence:

"..The socialisation of production has a dual potential, first for increased exploitation of the individual within a limited conception of the co-operative organisation of production,., but secondly for increased control by the producers of production and access to its fruits within an extended conception of the co­ operative principle. And the balance between these in practice is set by the state and the class struggle. ” (Harloe, M ., p .20)

The idea of autonomous housing organisations, as suggested by Turner, does not propagate the necessity to challenge the state domination, and does not acknowledge the existence of class struggle. This is because the significance of on-going social conflicts has been disregarded. In marxists view, very little attention has been paid to the fact that if these allegedly independent organisations are not systematically joined in opposing the dominant political forces, then they will be influenced and practically controlled by the state:

"..there is nowhere in Turner an analysis of the organisation of invasion movements and settlements by institutionalised political forces; nor is there any reference to the penetration of squatter organisations by institutional forces whose specific purpose is to defuse revolt." (Burgess R., 1982, p.75)

Here, Burgess has discussed the above relationship with regards to the hetronomous school. With reference to state sponsored self-help housing programmes in developing countries, Burgess (1976) argues that this has already happened, and there is a wide range of evidence suggesting that the local and non-governmental institutions have been taken over by the state and bureaucracy (Burgess, R., 1978). This is precisely because the community based organisations can not sustain their so-called "autonomy" in the absence of a fundamental social change, as Turner wishes to predict:

difficult to imagine any self-help housing or upgrading project not being emasculated by a heavy bureaucratic presence, given that this seems to be an inherent characteristic of the dependent capitalist state.” (Burgess, R., 1978, p.290)

Burgess concludes that these allegedly independent household associations, particularly in developing countries, can never be ”free" to manage their own affairs and have to act within the strict limits, put forward by the system.

'There are fimdamental reasons to believe that Turner's policies will only be implemented alongside, rather that instead of existing State housing policies, and that they will only assume a palliative character if they are accepted. " (Burgess, R., 1982, p. 88)

This is the very reason that scores of the WB housing activities, and their follow- ups by other international organisations, have been seen by the Marxist writers in the same light. The fact that governmental offices are given an increasingly greater role in the community based low-income schemes appear to validate the Marxist claim that they can not work in isolation in a capitalist system; i.e. state intervention is necessary.

Hence, according to Burgess as far as they are concerned, the position, level of "freedom” and "control” of the households and individuals are not fundamentally different in autonomous and heteronomous approaches as far as relationship between community organisation and the state is concerned. This reinstates the view that in the absence of fundamental social change, no amount of integration with, or isolation from, the state and bureaucracy would work sufficiently well to benefit the households.

According to Burgess the driving force behind state efforts to house the low-income groups quickly and cheaply is the necessity of reproducing labour power. The rate o f this process, thus, is determined by a number of secondary factors such as political considerations, the priorities in supporting a particular group of labourers for the maintenance of the capitalist system against the others, and the cost (Burgess, R ., ). Wether the state will favour different

degrees of autonomy or hetronomy will depends of these secondary factors.

With regard to the role of community based organisations in low-income housing process, Burgess has argued that the autonomous approach has gross theoretical shortcomings in its understanding of the state and its underling socio-economic relations. Therefore, the autonomists analysis of state-community relations, and their prescribed type of community organisation, based on overlooking the nature and function of the state within the capitalist mode of production would generally remain unsubstantiated. How, then, it is possible for the state to accommodate the autonomous community organisations and grant them access to necessary resources where it is structurally limited and geared to do otherwise, these Burgess has asked. How can the state remain neutral in the face of community-based organisations, and avoid dominating them politically, while autonomy is intrinsically unanimous with having a separate source political legitimacy?

Elaborating on his continuous criticism of the autonomists approach, Burgess (1982) has questioned the logic behind the belief that the state would be ready to disregard its own fundamental functions, against all the odds, and would perform as conjectured:

".. Turner argues that the central authorities should guarantee access to land, finance, and technical resources, but these, as he admits himself, are in the hands of private, commercial and financial interests., therefore (when he asks for state intervention) does he seriously expect that the interests of industrial, financial, landed and property capital are going to legislate against themselves?" (Burgess, R., 1982, p.76)

On the other hand, with reference to the inherent bureaucratic inadequacies enlisted by Turner, it has been pointed out that either Turner has lay out his for working in total isolation from the state, or he has to dismiss his own criticisms:

"..when Turner argues that the State should intervene to guarantee local access to raw materials, finance and land.. We are left with a fundamental contradiction: that the State which is 'par excellence' an example of all those features that Turner isolates as the source of the housing problem - hierarchy, large scale, centralisation, anonymity, etc. - rather than being a target for his criticisms is in

fact reserved the role of bringing about and administering something it should have veiy little control over!" (Burgess, R., 1978, p. 119)

The reason behind such contradictory remarks lies behind the true function of the autonomous approach in the capitalist system, Burgess has noted:

" The essential functions of the capitalist state are to maintain the cohesion of the social formation under conditions that secure the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production; to exercise the domination of the bourgeoisie over the subordinate social classes; and to conciliate the secondary contradictions within and between the fractions of this class." (Burgess, R., 1978, p .275)

This is an important observation, since as a significant number of state sponsored self-help schemes and other types of community oriented low-income housing projects have been carried out in the capitalist dependent developing countries. In this context, the autonomous approach is a method of reconciliation for resolving one of the dominant ’secondary contradictions’ in those societies, i.e. unprofitability of the low-income housing schemes for the market vis-à-vis the necessity of its provision to keep the reproduction of the low cost labour going. This is the reason that despite their fundamental disagreement for establishment of "autonomous" community organisations, a number of governments in developing countries have initially agreed to make room for the self-help housing schemes within their national policies.

"The ability of these dwellers to build substantial houses at significantly lower cost than their state agency equivalent has alerted experts to the potential of integrating self-help principles and procedures into an institutional framework provided by state organisation, finance and legislation. ’’ (Burgess, R., 1978, p.277)

The benefit of such integration is not only to ameliorate the urgent housing problem among the working classes, but it also helps to establish a network of patron-client relationship in which the state will gain some chances to consolidate its domination within these groups even further:

be mobilised on an ad-hoc issue-by-issue basis and the bulk of upgrading activities will fall back on family-based self-help labour. At local level the state's encouragement, sponsorship and organisation of self-help housing projects can bind residents to the political structures of the capitalist mode of production in the most intensive and organised form possible... In many if not most LDCs state power is used persistently to advance the political cause of the governing party at the expense of the opposition, and state self-help housing programmes can be one mechanism with which to achieve this. Thus, the selection of a community for a state self-help housing project can be an intense political process, deeply intertwined with political patronage structure." (Burgess, R., 1978, p .302)

Based on these analysis and criticisms, Burgess has suggested an alternative form of community-based organisation, which might be termed as "institutionalised community development system". According to this view, within the current socio-political systems the households organisations can be not 'autonomous' in any sense. Since it has to work alongside the other components of the system, at best it can be a formally recognised body, still within the realm of state control. But due to ability to exert some degree of systematical political pressure within the system, it might be more successful in facilitating the urban poor's access to resources by bring about some social movements among t h e m e . ^ To this end, a useful criteria for judging the level of real autonomy, in a given community- based organisation, is to look at its a ability to make decisions for its members and initiate related social movements by organising the low-income groups (Burgess, R., 1978) .

"Where state self-help upgrading activities have come about as a response to political mobilisation, a more decentralised and autonomous project is likely to evolve in which the community can exercise more control over the upgrading process. Resources, finance and labour will be organised on a collective basis and the community will act as a formal decision making authority, mediating between family and state." (Burgess, R., 1978, p .302)

Suggestion for establishment an institutionalised form of community-based organisation by

Note 4 jjjg Marxists recommended form o f these organisations is probably based on the trade unions model,