Parecon: Life After Capitalism

311 Pages·2003·1.11 MB·English

by  Michael Albert

Parecon

Life After Capitalism

MICHAEL ALBERT

London · New York
First published by Verso 2003
© Michael Albert 2003
All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
USA: 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014-4606
www.versobooks.com

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN 1-85984-698-X
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Printed in the UK by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn
www.biddles.co.uk
Table of Contents
• Introduction
o Parecon and Globalization
(cid:131) Rejecting Capitalist Globalization
(cid:131) Supporting Global Justice
(cid:131) Anti-Capitalist Globalization And Economic Vision
(cid:131) Summarizing Participatory Economics
o Parecon and Visionary Practice

• What Is An Economy?
o Key Economic Dynamics and Institutions
(cid:131) Ownership Relations
(cid:131) Allocation Institutions
(cid:131) Division of Labor
(cid:131) Remuneration
(cid:131) Decision-Making
o Economies
o Class Structure
o So, What Is An Economy?

• Economic Values
o Equity
(cid:131) Equity 1: Income
(cid:131) Equity 2: Circumstances
o Self-Management
o Diversity
o Solidarity
o Efficiency

• Judging Economies
o Private Ownership
o Corporate Divisions of Labor
o Central Planning
o Markets
(cid:131) Equity
(cid:131) Solidarity
(cid:131) Self-Management
(cid:131) Efficiency
o Capitalism
o Market Socialism
o Centrally Planned Socialism
o Green Bioregionalism
o A New Vision

• Ownership

• Councils
o Workers’ Councils
o Consumers’ Councils
o Consensus?

• Job Complexes

• Remuneration
o The Logic of Remunerative Justice

• Allocation
o Participatory Information & Communication
(cid:131) First Communicative Tool: Prices
(cid:131) Second Communicative Tool: Measures of Work
(cid:131) Third Communicative Tool: Qualitative Activity
o Allocation Organization
(cid:131) Steps of Participatory Planning
o A Typical Planning Process
o The Problem of Externalities
(cid:131) Collective Consumption
(cid:131) Individual Consumption
o Conclusion

• Summary and Defense
o Workers’ Councils and Balanced Job Complexes
o Consumers’ Councils and Remuneration for Effort and Sacrifice
o Participatory Planning
o Conclusion

• Evaluating Parecon
o Equity
o Solidarity
o Diversity
o Self-Management
(cid:131) Production
(cid:131) Consumption
(cid:131) Allocation
o Classlessness

• Working
o Capitalist Publishing
o Participatory Publishing: Northstart Press
(cid:131) Job Complexes
(cid:131) Councils
(cid:131) Larry’s Work Week
o Decision-Making at a Capitalist Firm
o Decision-Making at Northstart
(cid:131) Last Year at Northstart
(cid:131) Northstart Innovations
(cid:131) The First Planning Iteration: Nancy’s Initial Proposal
(cid:131) The Second Planning Iteration
(cid:131) The Third Planning Iteration
(cid:131) The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Planning Iterations
(cid:131) The Seventh Planning Iteration
o Northstart Efficiency
o Workplace Planning: Personal Texture
(cid:131) An Overview of John Henry Planning
(cid:131) Choosing Between Alternative Production Schemes
(cid:131) The Intricacies of “Working Overtime”
(cid:131) Evaluating and “Bartering”
(cid:131) Differential Productivity in “Competing” Steel Plants
(cid:131) Daily Decision-Making at Jesse Owens Airport
(cid:131) Hiring and Firing

• Consuming
o Collective Consumption
(cid:131) The Capitalist Case
(cid:131) The Participatory Case
o Individual Consumption
(cid:131) The Capitalist Case
(cid:131) The Participatory Case
o Consumption Planning
(cid:131) Determining County-Level Collective Consumption
(cid:131) Determining Personal Consumption Proposals

• Allocating
o Long-Term Plans
o Preparing Data for the First Round
o Revising Data in Subsequent Iterations
o Working at a Facilitation Board
o Qualitative Information

• Efficiency

• Productivity

• Creativity / Quality

• Meritocracy / Innovation
o Merit
o Innovation

• Privacy / Frenzy
o A Busybody Economy?
o Dictatorship of the Sociable
o Too Many Meetings?

• Individuals / Society
o Privileging Individuals?
o Over-Privileging Society?

• Participatory?
o Market Allocation By Another Name?
o Central Planning By Another Name?

• Flexibility
• Elevating Need?

• Compatibility

• Human Nature

• Asset or Debit?

• Excitement / Attainability
o Excitement
o Attainability

• Brief Bibliography

• Index

Acknowledgments

For every book many people contribute words, style, and ideas, not to
mention experiences. When a book calls on decades of collective
experience and centuries of history, giving comprehensive thanks is
impossible. Still ...
Thanks go firstly to Robin Hahnel with whom my contributions to the
participatory economic vision were produced in tandem.
To Andrea Sargent who edited the entire manuscript and is
overwhelmingly responsible for whatever clarity it has.
To members of South End Press now and in the past for helping create
the practice behind many of Parecon’s ideas.
To students at ZMI for their challenging discussions of the vision.
To volunteers and co-workers in current projects, Z and ZNet, and in
past efforts as well, for continuous feedback.
To audiences at public talks who have heard and debated the contents
herein. To participants in the ZNet forum system, who have pursued
the ideas in that venue.
To those who have created institutions employing Parecon’s insights
and relayed their experiences.
And to a few additional special individuals, as well, whose contributions
arrive via all the above routes and are so bountiful that personal
mention is mandatory: Justin Podur, Tim Allen, Brian Dominick,
Stephen Shalom, Cynthia Peters, Noam Chomsky, and Lydia Sargent.
And of course to Verso Books, for publishing Parecon, to Tariq Ali for
championing it, to Sébastien Budgen for excellent editorial assistance,
to Tim Clark for production work, to Gavin Everall for promotion, and to
everyone else at Verso for being there, and for caring about economic
vision.

Introduction

Most everybody I see knows the truth
but they just don’t know that they know it.
— Woody Guthrie

The British Victorian liberal thinker John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) tells us
that we ...
are not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal
state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing,
elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels which form the existing type of social
life are the most desirable lot of human beings.
The American social critic Noam Chomsky says he ...
would like to believe that people have an instinct for freedom, that they really want
to control their own affairs. They don’t want to be pushed around, ordered,
oppressed, etc., and they want a chance to do things that make sense like
constructive work in a way that they control, or maybe control together with others.
If “trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading” are not the “most
desirable lot” for humanity, what is? If humanity should not aspire to
create an elite minority joyfully dancing atop a suffocating
mountainous majority, what should we aspire to? If the instinct to not
be “pushed around, ordered, oppressed” and to do “constructive work
in a way that [we] control” deserves exploring, where should we
begin?
The United States has about 3 percent of the world’s population yet
does nearly half the world’s consuming. Within the US, about 2 percent
of the population own 60 percent of the wealth. Other developed
nations are similarly unequal. Less developed countries suffer broadly
the same internal distribution, though there the richest are less
wealthy and the poorest are more destitute.
Indignity, disempowerment, and hunger accompany capitalism
worldwide. No one sensibly denies this, yet even among those who
despise capitalism, most fear that suffering would increase without it.
While some certainly find capitalism odious, few celebrate an
alternative and those who do generally favor “market socialism,”
“centrally planned socialism,” or “green bioregionalism.” In contrast,
this book rejects capitalism but also the typically favored alternatives.
The English humanist William Morris (1834-1896) ...
[sought] a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither
master nor master’s man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain
workers nor heartsick hand workers, in a word, in which all would be living in equality
of condition and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full
consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all—the realization at last of the
meaning of the word commonwealth.
But how can we undertake economics to usher in Morris’s “common-
wealth”? How do we reward and ennoble work? How do we enrich
consumption and make it more equitable? How do we make allocation
just and efficient? Can we enjoy efficiency, justice, democracy, and
integrity simultaneously?
Part I of this book discusses economic values and institutions. part II
describes participatory economics and argues its benefits. part III
explores daily life implications of a participatory economy. part IV
rebuts plausible worries. First, we briefly address how economic vision
relates to anti-corporate globalization and other economic aims
garnering support around the world.

Parecon and Globalization
Anti-corporate globalization activists favor sympathetic and mutually
beneficial global ties to advance equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-
management. Globalize equity not poverty. Globalize solidarity not
greed. Globalize diversity not conformity. Globalize democracy not
subordination. Globalize sustainability not rapaciousness. Two
questions arise.
• Why do these aspirations cause anti-corporate globalization
activists to be critical of corporate globalization?
• What new institutions do anti-corporate globalization activists
propose to do a better job than those that now exist?

Rejecting Capitalist Globalization
Current international market trading overwhelmingly benefits those
who enter exchanges already possessing the most assets. When trade
occurs between a US multinational and a local entity in Mexico,
Nigeria, or Thailand, the trade doesn’t provide greater benefit to the
weaker party that has fewer assets, nor are the benefits divided
equally. Rather, benefits go disproportionately to the stronger traders
who thereby increase their relative dominance.
Opportunist rhetoric aside, capitalist globalization’s flow of resources,
assets, outputs, cash, capital, and harmful by-products primarily
further empowers the already powerful and further enriches the
already rich at the expense of the weak and poor. The result is that at
the turn of the twenty-first century of the 100 largest economies in the
world, almost exactly half are not countries but are private, profit-
seeking corporations.
Similarly, market competition for resources, revenues, and audience is
nearly always a zero-sum game. Each actor advances at the expense
of others so that capitalist globalization promotes a self-interested
“me-first” logic that generates hostility and destroys solidarity
between actors. This dynamic occurs from individuals through
industries and states. Collectively beneficial public and social goods
like parks, health-care, education, and social infra- structure are
downplayed while individually enjoyed private goods are prioritized.
Businesses and nations augment their own profits and simultaneously
impose harsh losses on weak constituencies. Humanity’s well-being
doesn’t guide the process but is instead sacrificed on behalf of private
profit. Against capitalist globalization solidarity fights a rearguard
battle even to exist, much less to predominate.
Moreover, cultural communities’ values disperse only as widely as their
megaphones permit, and worse, are frequently drowned out by
communities with larger megaphones impinging on them. Thus
capitalist globalization swamps quality with quantity. It creates cultural
homogenization not cultural diversity. Not only do McDonald’s and
Starbucks proliferate, so do Hollywood images and Madison Avenue
styles. The indigenous and non-commercial suffer. Diversity declines.