Troy Cochrane wrote:
> I'm curious as to the opinion of those on this list of Participatory
> Economics. It seems to be a well thought out, rationally presented, and
> viable alternative to capitalism and state socialism.
I've made a detailed assessment of parecon in two articles that have
appeared in the recent issue of the journal "Communist Voice". These articles
are based on a study of a number of Albert and Hahnel's writings, and also
take account of the experience of the attempts to build small alternative
institutions along the lines of parecon. Since these are long articles, I
give only an excerpt below, along with the URLs for their complete text, and a
list of their subheads.
Joseph Green
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Communist Voice website: www.communistvoice.org
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About Michael Albert's new book 'Parecon: life after capitalism':
Can participatory economics tame marketplace relations?
( full text at www.communistvoice.org/32cPareconOverall.html )
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Excerpt from the introduction:
Parecon is, according to Albert, "basically an anarchistic economic
vision that eliminates fixed hierarchy and delivers selfmanagement". (1) But
Albert believes that other anarchist economic visions don't seriously provide
for the necessary connection between different economic units, and thus don't
provide economic efficiency. Albert believes that parecon solves the ills of
anarchism, and molds economic efficiency with adherence to human values. We
shall see whether this is in fact so, or whether Albert mainly adds
bureaucracy to the anarchist vision without overcoming its reliance on the
market.
.......
My objection to Albert is not that he opposes marketsocialism, Stalinism,
and localism, but that, in the end, it turns out that he hasn't really got
beyond them. For all his rhetoric about opposing the idea that "there is no
sensible alternative", parecon simply dresses up old solutions with new
verbiage. He thinks that humanity will never be able to do away with money,
markets, and financialstyle calculations. Nor does he understand the
distinction between a transitional economy in progress towards that goal, and
an oppressive Stalinist system. So he is forced to rely on a patchwork of
ideas from the very systems that he wants to oppose.
* From marketsocialism, Albert borrows the idea of pricing things at
their true value, their "social cost". He believes that planning consists in
large part of pricing things accurately, thus supposedly purging the economy
of the distortions introduced by corporate capitalism. He takes over from the
marketsocialists, as well as from the bourgeois economists and corporate
apologists, the belief that money, and buying and selling are eternal. In
essence, parecon does not seek to overcome the law of value, but to purify it.
* From Stalinist economics Albert takes some basic methods of economic
calculation. Albert also falls into the proStalinist style of theorizing when
he regards "indicative prices" and "participatory prices" as different from
prices, "accounting money" as different from money, keeping financial balances
in a central computer system as different from banking, and "cost benefit
ratios" as different from profit rates. Marxist communism recognizes that
money and financial planning can't be eliminated immediately after the
capitalists are dispossessed, and that there is an extended transition period
during which the working class gains more and more ability to run the economy,
thus preparing to eventually dispense altogether with commodity production and
marketplace methods. But much of Trotskyist and Stalinist economics denies
that the use of money and profit accounting in the state sector, after the
revolution, are marketplace methods. They theorize that the categories of
commodity production lose their class character, and only superficially
resemble the categories used in capitalist economies. This allows them to
claim that the state sector has gone beyond capitalism, even when the working
class has lost control of the state and the economy as a whole.
* From anarchist localism, Albert borrows his rhetoric about hierarchy,
his belief that centralism is always antidemocratic, and his vision of society
as a fusion of local collectives connected through the exchange of goods.
Thus, Albert doesn't just take some secondary features from
marketsocialism, Stalinism, and anarchist localism. He embraces some of the
key fallacies of these trends.
Subheads:
Parecon as it would like to be
Equity and solidarity
Diversity
Ecological balance
Selfmanagement
Hierarchy
Government
The reign of the law of value
Parecon and the alternative institutions of today
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An anarchist society that wallows in regulation:
The structure of a parecon society
( full text at www.communistvoice.org/32cPareconStructure.html )
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Subheads:
Not autonomy, but participation
Workers' councils
Consumption councils
Government councils
Hierarchy, but no "fixed hierarchy"
Unions
Ownership
A planned economy
Markets
Accounting money and the central bank
The law of social value
The balanced job complex
Computers
Relations between different parecon economies
Parecon in practice
