Louis, For everything you say, I fail to see the true critique of participatory economics. Pining for the days of Paris Commune will not bring about revolution. Offering alternatives to the status quo will.
Did I appear to be pining for the Paris Commune? Actually I am much more nostalgic for 1967. Bring back Moby Grape!!!
You also criticize Albert and Hahnel for their own criticisms of Trotsky's and Lenin's support for hierarchy, but you fail to defend their stances.
I am not sure what you mean by hierarchy. In Sandinista Nicaragua there were plant managers, many of whom were actually hostile to the revolution but felt a patriotic sense of duty to stay in their posts. My organization Tecnica worked closely with these people, including a woman who kept a statue of liberty souvenir on her desk. In general, all revolutions are compelled by objective conditions to walk before they can fly. Marx expressed it this way: "What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges." (Critique of the Gotha Programme)
Of course, if you are writing blueprints for the future, such problems do not exist.
You also fail to explain why the historical elements were to blame for Stalinism, rather than the hierarchical nature of the system. Is it not possible that these elements would not have resulted in such a brutal, totalitarian system if hierarchy was not so extreme?
I recommend that you read Trotsky to understand why bureaucracy arose in the USSR:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1933/sovstate.htm
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
