Economics and the Rest Of Society

Michael Albert

A Participatory Economy produces, consumes, and allocates to meet people’s needs and develop their capacities. It also promotes equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management. Its central features are workers’ and consumers’ councils, remuneration according to effort and sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning. Yet, however high we may rate a parecon, a good society needs more than just a good economy.

Imagine a society with a participatory economy but sexist kinship institutions that subordinate women to men. What happens?

Parecon structures would violate a sexist household hierarchy by not subordinating women to men and by giving women and men expectations contrary to male supremacy. Sexist kinship arrangements would violate balanced job complexes by apportioning tasks unfairly in the home and by giving women and men expectations contrary to universal equity. The parecon would produce equitable expectations that the kinship sphere would violate. The kinship sphere would impart expectations of female subordination that the economy would violate. But if an economy produces people to not fit their households and households socialize people to not fit their economy, the economy or households must change.

In light of this, suppose a feminist movement favors genderless parenting instead of mothering and fathering. Or maybe it rejects patriarchal marriage and the nuclear family. Whatever its preferences, a new feminist vision would certainly require that a compatible economy not violate kinship values. Likewise,  a compatible kinship vision would have to respect parecon’s economic requirements.

Once we understand this reciprocity, we see that building a participatory economy impacts building a feminist kinship sphere and vice versa, and therefore need to be compatible. And similarly, for a good economy to fit with desired innovations in education, or the state, or culture, or international relations, it must incorporate structures that respect the new aims of those other realms--and vice versa. This is the logic of “economics and the rest of society” and here are some indicative examples.

Education

Education wants to convey information and skills suited to each individual meeting their own agendas. “Be the best you desire to be.” But education also wants to convey information and skills suited to people filling available roles in the society. “Be what society needs you to be.”

For ideal educational institutions, we would want these two aims to be mutually consistent and supportive. Education for people to be what they desire should be precisely what’s needed to also prepare them for positions that society will willingly remunerate. Education that prepares people to fit a good society’s roles, should imply addressing people’s fulfillment and development. A good society, in other words, offers people diverse role options in tune with their true desires and inclinations.

But think about capitalism. It often needs compliance, passivity, and a willingness to obey orders and endure boredom. Thus capitalism violates education for human fulfillment and development, and capitalist schools dumb most people down.

Parecon, in contrast, needs schools to educate people to deal well with information, to make smart decisions, and to utilize their special talents and capacities as they prefer and are able. Parecon not only doesn’t conflict with good educational priorities, it fosters them.

 

Ecology

The relationship between parecon and the environment is a little trickier. Any economy says to any effort to address the ecology, “fine, but do it in a way consistent with business as usual.” A market system thus says to those concerned about ecology, “fine, worry about the ecology, but don’t distort ecologically unsound market prices or curtail ecologically unconcerned market transactions or otherwise disrupt ecologically dismissive market logic.”

In contrast, participatory planning intrinsically properly values resources and ecological diversity in terms of their impact on human well-being and development. But beyond this, some people might also value various species or even natural formations independent of implications for humans. A parecon can accommodate rules about impact on other species, but only if it is compelled by outside constraints.

By its intrinsic logic, that is, a parecon values economic choices in terms of their implications for humans. It automatically accounts for resource depletion or pollution or extinctions or other ecological outcomes insofar as these in turn impact human well-being and development. Additionally, in response to an external advisory, a parecon can also not displace or kill rhinos, snail darters, smallpox bacteria, or anything else, even if displacing or killing rhinos, snail darters, smallpox bacteria, or anything else would benefit humans. In other words, when society deems an ecological constraint on economic options desirable, its imposition on a participatory economy will not disrupt the economy’s logic or efficiency.

But what about influences in the opposite direction? How does a parecon impact ecological concerns and sensibilities?

First, a parecon communicates to people focusing on ecology a strong impetus to not ignore the human dimension. Indeed, it literally compels all actors, including those who are primarily motivated by ecological priorities, to account for the human implications of their economic choices. And second, a parecon requires that ecological goals be realized without compromising balanced job complexes, remuneration according to effort and sacrifice, council self-management, and participatory planning.

 

The State 

One implication of parecon for the state is that political functions will be enacted in balanced job complexes and be remunerated only for effort and sacrifice. For any vision of adjudication, legislation, and political implementation, this means that whatever political values we seek, they must not violate pareconish economic values. Thus we won’t have politics elevating some people to disproportionate power, rewarding some with unbalanced job complexes, or giving some unjust income. Nor will the ideological or behavioral implications of political institutions obstruct producing and consuming in a pareconish way.

The legal system of a society is one typical political component we might consider. Currently U.S. attorneys for opposed parties do whatever they can get away with to win.  Neither is primarily seeking truth or justice, yet truth and justice are supposed to emerge from their competition. This may remind us of the even more ridiculous but quite similar idea that economic buyers and sellers being greedy anti-social individualists will maximally promote just economic outcomes. In any event, I suspect that a serious political vision won’t dispense with adjudication or policing but will, instead, define these functions more sensibly and find ways to accomplish them that also meets broader political, economic, and other priorities. Do we get rid of police or court trials and have everyone in the society do whatever policing is called for and resolve their disputes only informally or locally? I doubt it. I suspect we will instead recognize that like for piloting planes, or doing medical operations, or handling a big crane at construction sites, some folks being specially trained in police and courtroom functions with other folks not having to prepare for or worry about these particular tasks, will yield better skills and better utilize them than having everyone do these tasks without specialization, not to mention enhancing diversity. But however we come to understand police and courtroom or other political responsibilities, we will require balanced job complexes and participatory self-management for those doing them, of course.

 

International Relations

If we aspire to a parecon nationally, the consistent international economic goal seems pretty obvious. Why should a child born in a country with fewer resources or with a history of being dominated by colonialism have a worse life than a child born in a resource-rich country or a country that has colonially exploited others for decades? People born in different parts of the world should not suffer (or benefit) due to accidents of geography or past history. Thus a particular society with a parecon should deal with other nations in ways that reduce unjust differences in average income and circumstance as rapidly as possible without disrupting lives so much as to do more harm than good. A minimal but important step is that in trading with other countries a participatory economy would favor whichever price – the international market price or the parecon valuation within the parecon society – that most benefited the worse-off trade partner. Beyond this, it could offer various forms of aid, etc.

 

The Bottom Line

Obviously the above discussion is limited. Yet, nonetheless, many readers will easily agree that a good society should have equity of circumstance and income between men and women, respect for diversity of sexual and social choices, freedom for cultural communities to exist without fear of penalty and a general social respect for diversity, full political participation and full dissemination of information and skills essential to universal participatory self-management, respect for the natural environment as it affects humanity and also in its own right, and a steady equalization of wealth and circumstances internationally. But I suspect many readers would also easily agree that to answer the question “what do you want” and inform our strategic choices, we need more detailed and convincing descriptions of positive cultural, kinship, political, ecological, and international values and institutions.

The limited point of this commentary, therefore, is that if these new visions are to be compatible with parecon, they must not abrogate and ideally will even help promote parecon’s economic priorities and norms. Likewise, if parecon is to be compatible with these needed new visions, parecon’s economic implications must not abrogate and ideally will even help promote their kinship, sexual, cultural, political, ecological, and international priorities and norms.