Parecon as Anarcho Snake Pit: Scene Setting

John,

I will be addressing your points carefully in the next essay for sure, but I will also reply here more directly to you. I understand you have lots of time pressure and will certainly understand if you don't pursue the exchange further, or need a delay, or just want to wait until next week to see a more careful statement. 

You say your "main concern is that [you] staunchly support from each according to ability and to each according to need. [You are] not going to compromise on that point." Well, I hope we can all discuss that, albeit over time, or else what is the point?

My guess is that behind that commitment lies other commitments, say, to justice, or fairness, or equity, or self management, and so on. The norm you favor is therefore a means to other ends - not the end in itself. As such, I would also guess you have a belief in how folks would operate if guided by the norm you favor, and that that belief causes you to also believe it would lead to desirable results. And my guess is the main feature is that you think folks would be responsible - that is, when I work according to ability, I will, in fact, work a fair and just amount. When I receive according to need, I will receive a fair and just amount. And the same for you and everyone else. I also guess you do not believe that you, or some other person, or some group, should decide my ability, say, or my needs, contrary to what I say they are - nor that I should decide yours contrary to what you say yours are. But this leads to a very large problem. If I say I need three houses, a helicopter, a personal observatory, an olympic pool, a massive yacht, and so on - and if I alone get to state my needs, and if what I get is determined only by my stated needs, then I get it all. To not get that much, with those norms in place, I must say that I need less. But why should I? Given that I can get what I want and I want it all because all of it would improve my quality of life. If it is no harm to others, why not have it all? But let's say I want to be fair and I know it harms others for me to have too much (via effects on the environment, via requirements for labor, via using up energy and resources that could go to other purposes, and so on ) - now comes the unavoidable difficulty. How do I do that? How do I know what is a fair amount for me to need, and thus to take? There is no way to know, because there is no valuation of anything...

The same holds for me as a worker. I can say I have no ability, and I therefore do no work - or little. Why shouldn't I do that? Society says it is fine. Okay, suppose I decide I want to do my fair share. How do I know how much that is? Again, there is no measure to allow me to decide. No way to connect my consumption to what is fair for me to produce. No way for me to compare my effort to other peoples. I have to police myself, which is not really so admirable since it means curbing my desires rather than recognizing them - and, worse, I have to do it without information. 

One more problem - suppose we consider an industry - bicycles. How do the bicycle workers taken as a whole know how many to produce? How do they know how much people like bicycles relative to other things they might want, and therefore whether or not there should be investments in bike production and design? Again, there are no signals that allow judgements about relative desires - there is only absolutely, I want, or I don't want...

Okay, you may say, yes, I see the points - although, honestly, the above reveals that the oft sited remuneration scheme - from each to each - while wonderfully motivated, would, in practice, be a total debacle - but I still have my concerns about parecon remuneration. Fair enough. Let's consider those too...maybe they are right, and while from each to each isn't viable instead of equitable remuneration as parecon seeks it, maybe we need to find something else.

You say, "I cannot support individuals or even groups judging how onerous or worthy someone else's labor is."

The judgement is mainly about a job - is the job socially onerous or desirable for workers who fill it - not for a particular worker, joe or sally. Then the person filling it, and working well, say, gets more or less for doing so, due to it being a more or less onerous job. As to worthiness - the idea here is mainly that labor has to be productive to be worth doing, and to be worth using resources and energy and so on, to accomplish. If you are in a workplace and the guy next to you just sits and sleeps all day, or tells stories, etc. - do they deserve full pay? What if you have to do their work and your own?

Suppose I want to be point guard for the Lakers. I apply. They don't hire. That is sensible. Me being point guard for the lakers is ludicrous because in that position I cannot do socially valued labor. I would be wasting whole arenas, etc. I suspect you would agree that they should judge whether my output would be worthy enough to warrant my having the job, and getting remunerated for how long I work, how hard, and under how harsh conditions. I suspect you would then agree also, that the lakers workers council can and should make judgements about the quality of contribution of those working. Once the need for that type assessment is established - the whole argument is basically settled. The same thing applies to making bicycles. If I am incompetent, or I just slack off all the time, then my getting income for working on bicycles is socially harmful...particularly to other bike workers, but more broadly as well. I should do something I can do. And I should do it up to snuff, so to speak. To be remunerated as parecon urges gives appropriate/moral income, but also provides desirable incentives.

You say, "I support the complete abolition of money in all of its guises in preference for a sharing based economy in which we actually make as little as possible and maximize being lazy as Marx's son-in-law suggested." Okay, these are particular values. I think, instead, work under your own self managing say, contributing to the community, etc., is part of a fulfilling existence, not something to literally minimize. Think of an assembly worker who can't stand his or her job on the assembly line, subordinate, alienated, etc. - but then goes home on weekends and works in the garage on a car, or even helps a neighbor work on a car. 

Notice, also, that while you seem to resent the idea that society can judge that you don't warrant giant income or low work loads compared to average, that it can say your job is more or less onerous - or that you have worked more or less long - etc. - you can decide that everyone should like leisure so much that they won't want to work much. And that they will also want as little as possible. What happened to people not being pushed around by others, or by a system? 

Why not have a system that lets you opt for a bare minimum, if you like, and lets someone else decide they wish to work more, and on that basis, to have less leisure but more income. Think of leisure and stuff (income) and work done as a total package. Each of us can change the composition of each item in our labor/income/leisure package, but only such that our total package is comparably fair as all other people's total packages, as judged by society, which is, of course, ourselves.

I think you want to get rid of money, and prices, and income, because you want to get rid of them as we now know them. Me too. And you want justice, and fairness, and people having control over their lives up to other people also having control over theirs. Me too. This is what parecon as a whole accomplishes, and part of that is parecon remuneration, for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor. 

You write, "To go back to what I believe is our original human nature, we must take remuneration completely out of the equation so that we can motivate ourselves simply by helping others in our community."

I don't know what you think human nature is. But - First, what is wrong with both wanting to help others, and also to help self? Nothing. I am sure you are motivated by both, not either/or. Second, how do you know what helps others? You can't unless there are ways to convey valuations. 

When you say dump remuneration - it can only mean literally that I get anything I want and work any level I want - which is simply an impossibility and not moral in any degree, either, or that I police myself to arrive at just and fair results, and so does everyone else, yet there is no information to enable that step. 

What parecon does is give us all an interest in arriving at just results, while establishing, as well, a system that yields just results, in any event. 

You add, "I see much of the activity discussed in Z as too much middle class. Lower class people are too busy simply trying to survive to participate in the kinds of programs suggested."

Well, the key organizers now working on pareconish projects are, on balance, I think, working class, and very much involved in what you are calling struggling to survive. But set that aside. The big question is, is parecon a system that will elevate some folks above others, or is it a system that is classless? I agree that that is paramount. To assess that, however, one has to look at parecon's institutions...not at the working class, or coordinator class, or even ruling class background of some of its early advocates.

You write, "So I fear that Parecon would become an imposed institution on those below who are not given the luxury of time to participate (when your working four jobs as I am without benefits just to meet rent payments attending a lot of meetings is not an option)."

Look again at the description of the organization you voted against. Your concerns actually flow though it from top to bottom.

The point you raise here is not just valid, it is paramount. But it is not a reason to oppose a system, only a reason to find a path forward that will arrive at where we - you - want to go. And a path that frees up enough of your time, so you can fully participate, since otherwise it will not get where we want to go.

> Unless middle class people are willing to give much much much more support to the lower class, you're all talking amonst yourselves. 

Okay, but what about all the working class advocates, the ones organizing in unions, and, say, in the streets in NYC, or Wisconsin, Athens, London, and so on? The issue isn't do we have sufficient participants now. Of course we don't. The issue is, can we attain a sufficient scale and power, in the future... Doubts about that are not about the vision - but about our strategy - which is barely even stated, as yet.

> I am also an antiwar tax resistor who hasn't paid taxes since 2003. So I wonder how many middle class Parecon supporters are actually brave enough to risk imprisonment. 

I think quite a few, for what that is worth - but, honestly, I am not sure how any of this is relevant unless by it you are saying you think parecon is a system whose attributes benefit coordinator class types, managers, doctors, lawyers, and so on - and not working class folks. But there is really no argument here to that effect - and it is one of the central concerns of parecon, and also something I will address, in any event, in the next piece on znet, following up on the first.

> Besides, I don't see civil society being in a strong enough position to challenge the hegemony without armed struggle and when I attend movement meetings national strikes and armed struggle are off the table. I don't know the answer because what the Weather Underground and their ilk tried to do in the 1960s/70s failed but I have much less confidence in middle class talking points. We need negative growth and Parecon doesn't seem to emphasize the reality that consumption based lifestyles simply aren't sustainable.

Well, parecon actually facilitates proper valuation of environment and circumstances, and so charges for effects on each... Consumption that doesn't enhance quality of life - including counting its environmental impact, would not just drop, it would essentially disappear - but freely...by choice because that would be the way people can best fulfill themselves and utilize their talents and capacities. 

I knew those weathermen - and I was far from non violent myself - and am still not a pacifist. That debate has, honestly, no bearing on parecon as a vision - since one could be for parecon and favor arms, or favor pacificism... My own view, though, is that the idea that a left will beat an organized military and police apparatus in an industrialized setting, not by numbers and commitment which cause the organized apparatus to fall apart, but by force of arms - is, well, utterly ludicrous. I am sorry, but about this I just have to say - such inclinations however understandable, and sometimes meritorious, are in practice a recipe for personal and collective calamity.