June 8, 2003

Participatory economics, Parecon for short, is in the tradition of the utopia. Utopia not in the sense of a proposed re-organization of the society beyond the possibilities offered by the existing technology; nor in the sense of a community sharing poverty; but as a radical reorganization of the existing advanced capitalist society.

The author, Michael Albert, who is the editor of ZNet, rejects both the market and the centrally-planned economies as iniquitous. The one places a premium on property and on the privilege born of the existing class structure. The other excludes most of the persons from the process of decision-making which affects their lives profoundly and conduces to the birth of a privileged class from this very logic of classlessness. They are both based on alienated labour and wage-relationship. The one produces commodities, the other claims to move to the production of use-values. But the law of value reigns supreme in both.

The appearance of the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital in 1867 was part of a whole stream of socialist theoretical literature. It did not outline a “utopia”. In fact, it did not outline anything, being an analysis of capitalism. The suggestions about the shape of a new society came later from Engels and a galaxy of socialist thinkers, right down to Althusser, Bettelheim etc. in our own days.

Albert has an advantage over the writers of the nineteenth century in that he can analyze both capitalism and socialism as concrete social organizations. He can compare them, if he is so inclined, and draw the logical conclusions. He seems to reject capitalism with a cursory glance, while accepting most Marxist categories. Above all, he accepts that labour is the only source of value. Therefore, property must be abstracted, not as an accessory to labour but as a social category interposing itself between the labour and the means of production.

He goes further by refusing to accept an inherited asset, like intelligence, as a source of private income. He thus reduces all value not to the worker’s contribution to production but to his actual effort at creating material goods, that is, the “personal sacrifice or inconvenience incurred in performing one’s economic duties”. (p. 37)

His system is meant to replace the competition of the market and the command system of the central planning with solidarity. Here no decision would be taken without the participation of the person affected by that decision. The production would be under the self-management system from the smallest to the biggest economic unit.

The consumption would be decided upon by the territorial associations ranging from the ward to the national level. In short, it is recognized that economic democracy is not possible without political democracy, though the latter does not by itself guarantee the former.

The principle that production is for the man and not vice versa is contained in the full flowering of man, what Marx called the “labour becoming the primary need of man”. This means that all one’s talents should find expression. A worker may temper steel in the morning, read philosophy in the evening and maybe compose music on the weekend.

The author suggests for the purpose not only the sharing of mental and physical work by all in a team though in different degrees, but also the provision of opportunity to all to develop their special talents without turning them into sources of tribute. A brain-surgeon may do some bed-panning, while a nurse may take part in scientific research in his/her spare time.

The author has not defined the limits of wage-differentials, as had been done after the October Revolution, when the highest wage was equal to that of a skilled worker. But, abstracting the property and natural talent and basing the wage on actual effort, it is ensured that the wage differential would not be more than one-to-two, if even that.

Another very important point here is the rejection of consumerism. The grabbing mentality is the product of scarcity. If everyone could have a sports car for the asking, how many would want it? Would the consumers not themselves decide to translate the rising productivity into more leisure rather than more goods? After all, the ideal of man is to convert all labour into voluntary labour.

The picture of the “Parecon” society that emerges is close to that of the vision of communism among the Marxists, though neither class struggle is mentioned nor the question of the disappearance of money. And one imagines that the advanced societies of today would be in a position — materially and culturally — to go over to it.

However, two questions remain: who would be the agent of change and what about the eighty percent of the humanity constituting the third world.

Electoral democracy preserves the social order. It does not change it. I recall the British poet, Stephen Spender, telling us, “If I were a policeman, I would not have liked to wither away”. Much less would a capitalist like to be “de-propertied”. Wherever this class feels such a danger, it reacts violently and ferociously.

Marx had assigned the job of change to the working class. But the worker has been accommodated within the capitalist order in the advanced economies and does not seem to mind inequality as long as he has a safety net under him. So no agent of radical change is on the horizon in the advanced countries. And it is really the working class there that matters, that must lead the world.

The prosperity of the advanced economies owes itself, to an important degree, to unequal exchange with the backward countries. Would a parecon society agree to voluntarily modify this relationship, to voluntarily forego an advantage? Anyway, the Third World lacks the material basis to even attempt a parecon society. The backward countries, which took the path of communism, have all ended up with capitalism. Can parecon in the advanced world survive with most of the world living under capitalism? Alternately, can a just society in one part of the world remain just, if feeding parasitically on the rest? In short, Albert has given us a vision but skirted the methodology — methodology in a real world.

Parecon: Life After Capitalism
By Michael Albert
Verso, 6 Meard Street, London.
Website: www.versobooks.com
ISBN 1-85894-540-1
302pp. Price not listed

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)