Gar Lipow wrote: > The >fact that what is good in this excerpt cannot be summarized in a >paragraph is one reason I forwarded it. Okay, let's examine what Hahnel writes: ----- Do we want to try and measure the value of each person's contribution to social production and allow individuals to withdraw from social production accordingly? Or do we want to base differences in consumption rights on differences in personal sacrifices made in producing goods and services as judged by one's work mates? In other words, do we want an economy that obeys the maxim "to each according to the value of his or her personal contribution," or the maxim "to each according to his or her effort?" Do we want a few to conceive and coordinate the work of the many? Or do we want everyone to have the opportunity to participate in economic decision making to the degree they are affected by the outcome? In other words, do we want to continue to organize work hierarchically, or do we want job complexes balanced for empowerment? Do we want a structure for expressing preferences that is biased in favor of individual consumption over social consumption? Or do we want to it to be as easy to register preferences for social as individual consumption? In other words, do we want markets or nested federations of consumer councils? ----- This is the same old crapola. It is a variation of the sort of silly discussions that take place ad nauseum on Usenet: how can socialism work. The people who love to have these conversations are anarchists and DeLeonists. That's what Parecon is, it is a utopian scheme to compete with other utopian schemes. There is no strategic advice in anything that Hahnel or Albert write. It is mostly high-minded sermons about the need to eschew sexism and racism and to listen to each other, and fight the bosses. It is a left-wing version of what you would hear at a Unitarian service. One of the things that irritates me about these two is that they are totally lacking in self-criticism. The Marxist movement walks around in a total state of self-flagellation. That is part of its problem. Meanwhile, when you read Hahnel and Albert (or their second cousin Michael Lerner), you would get the impression that their shit doesn't stink. Jim Devine is much too nice a guy to really drive the point home. I am not a nice guy, so I will make the point for him. Albert-Hahnel are a couple of sectarians. Their "Workers Vanguard" is Z Magazine. It is a vehicle for reminding the left, especially the Marxist left, how fucked up it is and how fucked up it will remain unless it starts to take them as seriously as they take themselves. I can't take them seriously for the same reason I can't take any utopian socialist seriously. Blueprints for socialism, and that is exactly what "LOOKING FORWARD: PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS FOR THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY" is, are a total waste of time for socialists. Revolutionary socialists--and that is the only way socialism will come about, through revolution--are not like draftsmen or architects or systems analysts working at a desk with slide-rules and computers. We are more like midwives. We will be operating in conditions much more like an operating room where there will be utter chaos, with screaming, and with blood and other fluids pouring out, and a baby stuck half-way out of the mother's womb. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
