Response on Parecon by a Revolutionary Anarchist

Wayne, you seem not to appreciate that the terms "decentralization" and "centralization" are hopelessly vague. Right wing "libertarians" advocate markets because they are decentralized. And markets are decentralized in the sense that there are many autonomous centers of decision-making....such as all the various firms. Participatory economics is not a form of central planning....something you seem to not realize. Each local neighborhood assembly is a center of initiative and decision-making, controlling its own neighborhood and proposals for its area. It and the other neighborhoods for example would have the power to disallow production groups to pollute or act in ways destructive to the local environment. Similarly, the various workplace assemblies also are autonomous centers of decision-making in that they control the places where they work, and make the decisions about what techniques to use, how to organize work, and so on.

But workplaces must also take into account what people want produced, and potential effects on the communities around them, and their relationships with supplier groups or groups they supply. You don\'t say anything on how that is to be arranged. You also slide back and forth between two incompatible ideas. On the one hand, you talk as if each community (up to what size?) is to be autarkic, but then you suggest that 2/3 of what is consumed can be produced locally...implying that a very large and important 1/3 is brought in from far away. How is that division of labor to be arranged/ How is to be decided exactly what is to be produced locally versus not? and what is the scope of "local"? Would the Los Angeles metro area with its 14 million people be "local"?

You also never say what you mean by "democratic planning." Many anarchists have been committed to the One Big Meeting idea. This means everything being planned through decisions at one big community meeting or perhaps a meeting of delegates. Whether the Bookchin idea of town meetings or de Santillan\'s idea of national worker congresses, they are still proposing that plans are to be derived via One Big Meeting. this won\'t work. It is in fact a form of central planning. Even if you propose to have scope of these One Big Meetings be only a town or city, it\'s still a form of central planning, just  at a small scale. Some anarchists have believed apparently that central planning will work if only the scope is small enough. But it won\'t work because it  has no way to obtain accurate information about people\'s priorities/preferences, and will inevitably violate self-management in many ways.

Presumably what you mean in saying that participatory economics is "centralized" is that there is a process of adjucting production and consumption throughout a large territory. But if you disagree with that, then you\'re committed to local autarky. And that is bound to be arbitrary and inefficient, given that there are many things where it makes sense to have only a few production units for, say, the whole country or a large region, such as an oil refinery or steel mill or power plant. If you say that power can be generated entirely thru local generators, the problem with this are increased pollution and lower efficiency.

And if you agree that it makes sense to allow a large part of production to be arranged across a large territory like North Ameica -- such as wines, oranges, metal products, etc. -- then how is that arranged? Anarchists have always lacked an adequate answer to this. Castoriadis and de Santillan proposed forms of "grassroots democratic planning" that were in fact forms of central planning. But other anarchists simply avoid providing a plausible answer or any answer. At least de Santillan and Castoriadis and GDH Cole were addressing the question...whereas you do not.

I\'m glad Wayne and Michael are having this tete-a-tete. An exchange of this sort may help to clarify some issues. My comments to Wayne:

1.  In your opening piece you tried to characterize the Left-anarchist or "anarchist-communist" view on the sort of society to work for, i.e. their revolutionary vision. But I think it\'s a mistake to use the term "cooperative" to do this. A "cooperative" is a business that is collectively owned by its workers. But this means the means of production are collective private property and it operates in a market economy. But traditional anarchist-communism was, well, communist. To take a very important historical example, the Spanish anarchist union federation in May 1936 developed its own program for what it called "libertarian communism." It envisioned that the means of production would be owned in common by everyone and the worker organizations managing particular industries would be doing so as agents of the people, and would be doing their work in accordance with some sort of social plan developed in a grassroots way. They also envisiond merging all the assets in each industry into a single "industrial federation": so that workers would not be competing with each other.

2. This also seems to run counter to your claim that previous anarchist vision always emphasized local or regional autonomy from integration in a larger economic system. Some did, some didn\'t. And this brings me to another questionable claim. You seem to suggest that most "revolutionary class struggle anarchists" have refused to advocate a particular vision of how to restructure society and advocated instead some period of "experimentation" in different areas or something like that.

But I think that most anarchists who have written about vision have not taken that view. Kropotkin had his own particular program, of largely self-sufficient community based communism. Abad Diego de Santillan, in "After the Revolution", advocated a system of  worker-managed industries with social planning through a national workers congress -- not too different from the ideas of Daniel De Leon that had influenced the early IWW.  In fact De Santillan was advocating a form of democratic central planning. And he was an anarchist-communist. And Bookchin had his particular program.

Your idea of experimentation isn\'t entirely clear. I would make a distinction between experimentation in regard to the details versus the major structural changes. It seems to me that a revolutionary mass movement would need to discuss and have some ideas about the basic structural changes it wants to make, and these things also are important in terms of inspiriing the struggle.

But that is consistent with experimentation in the details or specifics. I tend to regard participatory economics as merely a proposal in regard to certain basic structural features or as  Michael says, "defining institutions".  I expect that there would be inevitably a lot of experimentation in regard to details.

I also agree with Michael that economies are "integrated affairs", and that you need an overarching structure that governs division of labor and allocation of resources across the whole revolutionary territory. But I think this is consistent with the local assemblies in workplaces and neighborhoods being authentic centers of initiative and autonomy. The idea of particpatory planning is to provide a way for them to "adjust" to each other while retaining that decisiion-making autonomy.

I think some of the anarchist emphasis on local autonomy can favor market socialism. I also think that not having a vision of at least the basic institutional structures we want to achieve will tend to play into the hands of educated minorities playing an unfortunate role, possibly leading to coordinatorist arrangements. I really don\'t see how there is any alternative other than participatory planning if you want to avoid market socialism, with the dangers of sustaining class division that go with that.

3. One point where I am in agreement with Wayne is that I think it is important looking at how the ideas about social re-structuring relate to the social forces and movements that are going to make changes. As Wayne points out, ideas about worker assemblies and councils, and about neighborhood asemblies or councils, were developed within the historic mass movements and have a long history as far as their springing up in periods of mass unrest. But in this context I find it strange that Wayne never mentions anarcho-syndicalism since this was the one form of anarchism that was able to build mass movements/mass organizations, and actually was the main force in the most important revolution in an industrial country in the 20th century (in Spain).

4. The left-anarchist critique of electoral politics has historically had both a positive and negative side. The positive stance is in favor of collective direct action and mass protest and mass movement building as the alternative to electoral politics. The negative side of anarchist views on this, which Wayne emphasizes, is the critique of voting, relying on elections of leaders to state office, etc. While Wayne focuses on the negative stance, it seems to me the positive stance is stronger. About half the working class in the USA doesn\'t vote, they apparently perceive the Repubs and Dems as both serving the interests of big business, a correct perception. On the other hand, many working people do vote because they fear handing over the government power to their wost enemies without a fight. And that\'s a rational position also. The advantage to the positive anarchist alternative -- emphasizing direct action, mass movement building, etc. -- is that it gets past this disagreement.

5. Finally, in regard to the developing Left-anarchist views on the role of a political organization, it isn\'t only "platformism" and "especifismo" that have contributed here. There is also the "dual organization" theory developed by Italian anarchists during and after World War 1, and this has had a certain influence on my own orgtanization, Workers Solidarity Alliance, which comes from the anarcho-syndicalist tradition, doesn\'t disagree with the views about a democratic revolutionary organization that Wayne suggests here, even tho we don\'t define our organization as "platformist" or "especifista". (For those unaware, "especifismo" refers to the organizational ideas developed by the Urugugayan Anarchist Federation in the \'50s and \'60s when it was an important influence in the labor and housing coop movements in Uruguay.

Wow, the gall to state what "revolutionary anarchists" believe. And here I thought I was one. Damn I guess NEFAC won\'t be renewing my Certified Anarchist credentials anytime soon...

Nevertheless, I am an anarchist and a strong, long-time advocate revolutionary change, and also a long-time proponent of parecon. Funny how other pareconist types -- including non-anarchists -- have never told me I can\'t call myself a pareconist because I believe in revolutionary anarchism. But this so-called "revolutionary anarchist" is implying I\'m not a revolutionary anarchist, since I believe wholeheartedly in parecon and think he is talking out his ass on this matter.

The fact of the matter is there are MANY revolutionary anarchists who believe strongly that parecon is perfectly suited to our values and vision, and is in fact a perfect answer to the question of how to organize an economy along anarchistic principles. We do, however, tend not to play dress-up with the types of black-flag-waving douchebags that have hijacked the concept of what it is to be an anarchist and more offensively, dictate who and what is not "anarchist".

If this "Wayne Price" piece is a satire of the kind of goofball "more-anarchist-than-thou" hairsplitting and infight-picking that goes on in "revolutionary anarchist" circles, then consider me fooled -- great job caricaturing the back-asswords thinkiing that has so many of us hesitating to admit that, yes, we too are anarchists, though not like those sectarian fools that spend all their time pointing out what real anarchists think. Otherwise, if this piece is not a joke... what a shame.

you would have better served your argument by familiarizing yourself with writings on parecon before making such generalizations.

i am very interested in constructive criticisms of parecon but im not interested in poorly researched strawmen arguments.