I have to say I feel Victor has a few points in his posts, I get and understand PARECON objective, but don't feel it's the model to get there.

MHO anyway.

Tati

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recetas de cocina españa

I'm also working in a in a Health Care Center for old and disability people. Well, it's not my job to change diapers but I can smell all that goodies all day long. I don't think changing diapers is a degrading job. It's about helping people and helping is good. Too bad the money you get for this job are degrading. mtbrad will change diapers for his child for sure. ~~

 

donate car

 

"What is the alternative to capitalist globalization?" is a question challenging activists around the world. Michael Albert has wrestled with this question for many years, and his answer has captured the imagination of many. Participatory Economics--"Parecon" for short--is Albert's proposal for an economic system which offers a real alternative to capitalism, built on familiar values including solidarity, equity, diversity. In this ambitious new book, Albert goes further. Realizing Hope offers a vision of how whole areas of life might be transformed in a post-capitalist society, one where communities rather than profits are placed firmly at the center.

Work is something that is supposed to give you satisfaction and self respect besides the fact that it provides you whit decent living in a modern world. Unfortunately not all people are satisfied of their jobs and this is a big frustration because it inhibits peoples personality.

the popular forms of media as you have described - novels, songs, movies etc are increasing very rapidly and i think this is a very good opportunity. weight loss

Well people like to engage themselves in other discussions rather than starting their own. Maybe they lack the initiative or don't know exactly what to discuss about so they search for some posts just to lose some time.

Your sex life isn't the issue. Global environmental meltdown caused by the industrial civilization we all are a part of is the issue. Or one of them. I think it is morally reprehensible not to be a "workaholic" on this issue. Like it or not, we haven't got much choice. And then: you're laughing about condom production in an economically equitable society while millions of people now suffer horribly for lack of equitable distribution of condoms. That's not funny. Anonymous you might know people who don't mind doing shit jobs "if they are paid well and have time for themselves", but as long as people who don't do shit jobs make all the decisions about how much people who do shit jobs get paid and how much free time they have, the example of your friends slumming it aren't usable examples of why balanced job complexes wouldn't work. I also get the feeling you're pretending that corporate globalism hasn't brought many of the shittiest shit jobs to places where you don't see them and your friends don't get to choose to do them. Keir The Hague

Bjc is a rigid monstrosity hacked up by someone who is obviously a workaholic. Indeed this is the ethos of parecon. Too much time is spent on endless meeting, measuring job worths , accessing sacrifice and efforts, rotating shifts etc etc. After a while (or maybe not even a while) most people will be fed up with the big hassel. Albert claims that parecon eliminates the adversarial relation of the market but I can see how the endless, back and forth meeting sessions in parecon are much more frustrating and acrimonous and more susceptible to back room deal cuttings. Afterall in a real parecon many people of different agendas and philosophies have to be involved, not just a few wide eyed converts like in Albert's tiny entreprises.

I know a lot of people who probably don't mind doing "shit jobs" as long as they are paid well and have enough time left for themselves.

Not everyone gets the meaning of life from his jobs. For many people a job is just a way to get a pay cheque. Not necessarily a bad idea. Most of us are mature enough to know that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to in life to get what you want. It is about trade offs. The alienation that Marx spoke of will diminish if you don't need to spend 40 hours a week trapped in an office or a sewer and have plenty of time to persue other interests and goals. Now granted that people may hold such ideas because they are degraded by capitalism and have lost their true nature, but since we have no way of knowing if that is the case we should take them on their words. If we are truly democratic we should listen to people speaking for themselves, not speaking for them without them asking us to.

The capitalist work tempo and low pay compels a lot of people to spend most of their lives on paid work, that is the problem IMO, not necessarily the work itself. I am not ashamed of being an "elitist" I can tell you I don't like working in sewers. But if I can make enough money by doing that three days a week and have enough time to do other things, go to school, go to play and have the means to quit and switch jobs when I am fed up I don't really care.

But parecon replaces capitalism's rigidity with even worse rigidity. At least under capitalism, if you have a job and don't run your own business(and if you are not an overly responsible "coordinator" like Paul Street), you don't have to worry about work once you get off, even though you may be tired and exhausted and somewhat poor. In the advanced welfare states workers at least have a "residual life" after work. But in parecon work is the totality of life, one never "gets off".

To my mind any liberation movement should *liberate* by maximizing individual autonomy and choice.The freedom from being bothered is an important basic freedom,--anti-social types have rights too. The human spirit is crushed by the machine of capitalism but parecon tries to rectify it by creating something much worse. Parecon is a way to attain absolutely equality by turning all of us into worker ants. Worker ants are worker ants, whether they are "self managing" ants,--actually managed by the busybodies,-- or take their orders from some one else.

Thanks but no thanks.

BTW, I anticipate that I am going to get lucky with the ladies (or maybe the guys) in the upcoming year. I want to get a large order of condoms with spiral shaped grooves (I am kinky that way) I have to submit the request form to the neighbourhood commitee for review in the begining of the year under parecon. Since I am sort of bashful and actually am having an affair with the commitee chairman's daughter. What should I say when the commitee asks me why do I suddenly need so many condoms? Even under the patriot act I don't have to explain my sex life to the FBI.

Keir, you are going to have to explain to me why parecon is uniquely suited to handling envrionmental sustainability? Why would it be better than any other planned economy? Why would it be better than any society that socialized the economy and matched the social goals with the envrionmental requirements? mtbrad, thanks for the question. It is my understanding that Parecon, uniquely among other planned economies, allows people to influence planning, resource allocation, etc, in a direct connection to how those plans effect their lives. Simple example: if the people planning how Factory X will dispose of its waste don't actually live in a place where the effects of those plans will be felt, they have no business making those plans. Environmental disaster is essentially guaranteed sooner or later. To use the favorite vocabulary of this thread: people usually don't shit in their own drinking water. The contemporary environmental problems stem from capitalisms growth imperative . . . I don't know if it's that simple. Not all anti-capitalists are necessarily eco-friendly. A very interesting person on environmental sustainability is architect William McDonough (google him, there are even some videos up), who is (I believe -- I'm just getting familiar with his work) rather pro-market. Keir The Hague

But when you say you hate 'the term,' you'd do well also to say you actually support what the term refers to. Otherwise, people can easily misperceive your meaning.

I have no idea what the term refers to. That's the point. Asking me if I support "participatory democracy" would be like asking me if I support widgets. Why doesn't the question, "Do you support widgets?" make any sense?

That's the same reason asking, "Do you support participatory democracy?" makes no sense.

Or, it's like saying about someone, "He's not a real American." Well, what is a "real American." None of these terms -- not "real American," not "widgets," and not "participatory democracy" -- have any meaning at all, beyond what the person using the terms wants them to mean.

Now, participatory economics -- that has a definite meaning. It has a definite structure that can be assessed. "Participatory democracy," on the other hand, is a totally vapid term -- one that can easily be used to obscure where objective power lies, rather than highlight it.

Hence, I hate the term, and I never use it.

My anger flows from years of abuse. It's why my ambassadorial appointment to Paraguay was nixed.

Did you ever diagram sentences in grade school? Let's examine the following sentence of mine:

I hate the term "participatory democracy."

The verb is "hate." When diagramming a sentence, always find the verb first.

The next step is determine the subject of the sentence. In this case, we do it by asking, "who hates?" The answer, in the sentence, is "I." Since "I" hate, "I" is the subject.

Okay, next step is look for the object. I hate what? In the above sentence, the thing I hate is "term." "Term" has an identifying definite article "the." That is, "term" is a noun, ("the" is a "noun signal," if you prefer that term to "definite article"), so in this sentence, "term" is the direct object of the sentence.

Lastly, what is "participatory democracy?" Is it an object complement, because it follows and modifies the direct object "term."

To test your understanding of this material, may I administer the following quiz:

1) In the sentence, Eric hates the term "participatory democracy," the thing that Eric hates is

a) participatory democracy

b) you

c) the term

d) beef stroganoff

e) I don't know, this quiz is too hard

If you have a very small child or grandchild in your home, please ask her or him to grade the quiz for you after you have completed it. Failure means you're an idiot.

Keir, you are going to have to explain to me why parecon is uniquely suited to handling envrionmental sustainability? Why would it be better than any other planned economy? Why would it be better than any society that socialized the economy and matched the social goals with the envrionmental requirements? The contemporary environmental problems stem from capitalisms growth imperative (which feeds expansion through consumer soceity and other problems). If we remove the growth imperative (which is fueled by the competive undergerth of capitalist society) then we remove most of the environmental sustainability problems. This could possibly be overcome through parecon but also through any system that removes capitalisms competitive drive and the growth imperative this breeds. Anonymous (bwong?), I may be talking a bit abstractly and be assuming too many 'shit jobs' away, however human ingenuity if put towards overcoming some of these jobs could go very far. This would of course require us wrestling the ingenuity and creativity away from the profit maximizing area of society and using for the betterment of all. I also believe in a sort of solidarity and sacrafice that I think is inate in humans. If given the chance they will do the necessary 'shit work' if they see it helping general wellbeing and aren't punished by low wages as they are now. I feel strongly that it must be this kind of socialized comradery or solidarity and not a strict state inforced 'Balanced Job Complex' that overcomes the problem though. The former would lead to social stability while the latter will just form a new type of oppression and I think will retard soical efficiency to the point of colapse.

There's a lot of anger amongst potential partners here. What's the bottom line? I have to credit ebpatton for explaining -- with vitriol -- why some of the counterarguments to parecon are distasteful (it was just intuitive to me). Opponents to parecon might be happy to know that "fanatics" like ebpatton or Mike Albert would absolutely not "dominate" anything in a participatory economy. The anonymous statement above comes from extraordinary and obvious ignorance about the vision. The whole point is that you wouldn't have fanatics, jerks, pricks, idiots, assholes or anybody remotely resembling your boss "dominating" your activities. Can't happen. Nice to read that Chomsky was talking about the environmental necessity of economic vision nearly forty years ago. Not-so-old dogs need to learn new tricks. To repeat my previous comment, Parecon is uniquely suited to handling environmental sustainability, which is, which must be the priority at this point. Are there other economic models which even come close? Keir The Hague

Seriously man you are talking abstractions. I cannot think of any society where working in a slaughter house is a fun and empowering job, unless you are the kind of person who enjoy torturing animals. It may be that in the future classless Utopia we will all become vegetarians, but what about working in a sewer maintaining crew? That is literally a "shit job" that cannot be avoided; even in a classless society people still need to go to the bathroom. Maybe I am naive but I think job satisfaction is not just a the result of how society ranks work, there is also an intrinsic component to it. In some way it is also very subjective, apart from examples like butcher and sewer work clew there are jobs which some people enjoyable while others don't. You cannot pay be a million dollars to be a surgeon even though by all account it is a prestigeous job in our present society. I will pass out at the sight of blood and guts. Preferences may be subjective but it doesn't mean it is less real or that it must be constructed by the class society. As Chomsky say somethings are innate (though it is probably hard to figure which is and which isn't except for the simplest cases)

IMO parecon is unworkable(I know, you are not exactly arguing for it) I can't put it better than Carl Davision. Victor's characterization of Albert's approach as trying to reduce Mona Lisa into a mechanical description of brush strokes also hits the nail on the head IMO. Ebpaton is probably the best advertisment of why parecon would be aweful. A parecon society would be dominated by fanatics like him and the Cultural revolution would look like child's play. It would be exactly like what critics are saying all along.

In some Buddhist writing somewhere (Pema Chodron?) there's a comment on the compulsion to respond and "the courage of not responding" - of just letting alone.  I struggle (generally unsuccessfully) with needing to always respond to Internet communications, especially critical ones via either e-mail or blog and with not having the courage to just let what I said stand where it was: partial and imperfect, flawed.

One thing that can be lost in the arguing (occasionally too ad hominim) is that this excellent Mitchell S. post sparks dialogue among a group that desperately needs to be expanded: leftists who are willing not just to rip on existing class/imperial society (I've admitted that such ripping makes up 97 percent of my own ZNet writing and don't know if this old dog is going to learn new tricks) but to develop an alternative vision.

On the importance of taking that vision step, here is an intertesting comment that I'm not sure I ever see cited (if Mike Albert doesn't cite it he ought to because it would seem to work very nicely for his set-up argument):

"But in the long run, a movement of the left has no chance of success, and deserves none, unless it develops an understanding of contemporary society and a vision of a future social order [emphasis added, P.S.] that is persuasive to a large majority ot the population."  Further, the same author says that the need "for some far-reaching alternative" [to state capitalism and business rule] is clear since "the economists' 'externalities' can no longer be consigned to footnotes.  No one who gives a moment's thought to the problems of contemporary society can fail to be aware of the social costs of consumption and production, the progressive destruction of the environment [emphasis added], the utter irrationality of the utilization of contemporary technology, the inabiliy of a system based on profit or growth maxmization to deal with needs that can only be expressed collectively, and the enormous bias this system imposes toward maxmization of commodities for personal use in place of the general improvement of the quality of life."  

This is from Noam Chomsky, "Some Tasks for Responsible People" (August 1969), pp. 153-154 in Chomsky on Democracy and Education, edited by C.P. Otero (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003). 

That's an interesting early comment from a guy who went on write prolifically but mainly on (a) "the understanding of contemporary society," not (b) the "vision of a future social order."

The second topic strikes me as more difficult and also now more urgent. Asking NC or a John Pilger (for example) to have done more on (b) than (a) is probably like asking the keyboardist to play guitar or the point guard to play power forward.  I come out of the keyboards here but am willing to recognize the special need for more visionary guitarists at present.  The vision thing is critical and it's a great contribution to advance it on the left.

Seriously, you can't imagine a world were we could all do what we wanted to and by applying ourselves and developing the capacities of every individual to their fullest potential, that we would reach a point where there would be vast surpluses. The key to a classless society is to educate everyone and allow them to do what every they are drawn to, allow them to reach their full potential, and thereby increase the efficiency of society. This would allow for a severe reduction in work time and a commensurate increase in leisure time. The falure of capitaism is in its inability to allow each to do according to their ability and skill. This is what Marx described, he claimed that when the social realtions, the forced inefficiencies caused by degraded human potential, become a fetter on the forces of production then a new society would emerge. It appears to me that in a paracon society the burden of BJC would slowly overtime decrease the efficency and therefore increase the amount of 'shit work' and the missery. As I and others have said there is no such thing as 'shit work' outside of the crappy remunerations and degraded social status of those jobs. Your inability to appreciate this shows your elite status in society, not mine.

Sorry, Victor I thought you were someone else and did not read through your post entirely. Won't happen again.

Can you provide a quote from anything that Albert has written on parecon to give us an idea of what you mean?

I think there's a connection between your desire to ban markets entirely and your comtempt for participartory democracy as well.

*sighs*

I never said I had contempt for participatory democracy, but it's pointless to talk to you. What did I actually say? Is it possible for you to go back and look at what I actually said?

Carl Davison wrote: "That's what I get from his answer to my question about being allowed to make a living by selling my services, such as repairing computers. I already have the means and tools to do it between my ears and in my small tool kit, but in strict Parecon, there's no money to pay me or for me to buy things at the store. If I survive, it's as a group of liked-minded Robinson Crusoes somewhere or, more likely, in a black market of some sort that will emerge, and perhaps be punished in some fashion."

Don't worry mate, the supercomputer is Albert's all purpose black box whenever questions are raised about the feasability of large scale implementation of parecon. Parecon generates an insane amount of data trail and Albert sweeps them under the buzzword "supercomputer".The magic box keeps detail tracking on consumptions and remunerations I am sure there will be great demand for good computer hackers.

I'm glad Paul and Keir reduced the testosterone of the discussion a little bit. My behavior was/is getting on my nerves.

Maybe it's time to move on...

I've read Parecon. I've worked (literal) shit jobs out of necessity. I've also been an adminstrator, and I'm an artist. So that's where I'm coming from. Now. I think any honest discussion of how we envision and organize an economy ought to take into account the fact that our civilization is rapidly destroying the planet. Whatever economic model we choose, we need to consider that everything is basically poisoned. Happily, Parecon actually makes possible equitable and sustainable use of resources. I don't know of any other realistic economic models for industrialized civilization which are fundamentally environmentally sound. Something else to consider. Keir The Hague

For what it's worth, I've never had a job that wasn't "shit work." I was a professor for a year (2005-06). The clerical minutaea was just endless; there was amazingly little time to think clearly or live pleasantly. I could never catch up with the papers to grade, the lectures to write (I was admittedly given classes I'd neve prepped)and the meetings to attend. It was awful...and profoundly anti-intellectual (an experience that made the intellectual under-production of the professoriat much less mysterious to me) After doing a year as a privileged academic, I had much less envy for classroom coordinators' (professors') exalted status: it was a real pain in the ass and I could hardly coordinate myself to sleep at night. Same thing in differant ways with a big research job (even had the absurdly overblown title "Vice President") at a "civil rights" agency 2000-2005: constant immersion in maddening bureaucracy and endless and often trivial details. The hours were limitless. Only way I've ever gotten anything creative done while having big fancy coordinator class jobs was by cheating my bosses and stealing time from paid duties and/or sleep and physical and emotional health. Of course it didn't help that I was (and remain) a radical and so wanted to be lecturing and researching about things that were forbidden to a significant extent. People in the fancy pants coordinator class routinely report having the life sucked out of them by chronic overwork and preposterous levels of stress. I supppose there's some self-serving self pity in that but there's also some substance - it's a vapid and deadening life though of course it carries numerous privileges and is nothing like living in the ghetto or working on the dangerous high-speed hog-killing floor at the IBP slaughterhouse in Ottumwa, IA, where Upton Sinclair's "Jungle" is alive and well. People whose inclinations are towards writing (fiction or non-fiction)often report preferring more physical/onerous ("shit") jobs over professional or semi-professional (like say para-legal or assistant computer technician) because (they sometimes say) you can leave work without all your mental energy (and your eye power) stolen. But you also often go home without a livable wage. My main problame with culturally defined/socially constructed "shit work" I've done in this ridiculously capitlalist society (blue-collar factory worker, apartment complex cleaner and handyman, bus-driving and some door-to door canvassing) has been about (1) low pay and (2) safety (came close to getting killed at Del Monte and to getting mauled by Dobermans while canvassing) but the work itself generally left me more clear-headed and with the sort of energy required to read, write, compose music and the like. It also involved and gave rise to much more comradely interaction and friendship with fellow workers. This little memoir aside, I think it would be useful for anyone trying to sell an alternative left postcapitalist system to talk about how we could all be able to end up doing less overall work and more self-directed and creative stuff. People are just ridiculously overworked in late capitalist America, including even and perhaps especially salaried professionals (salary payment is a big structural incentive for employers to extend hours). Of course we need to distribute work and power and money equitably and to create egalitarian workplace and allocation systems, but we also want to tell people how (to paraphrase the young Marx) they can be critical critics in the morning, historians, painters, blues key-boardists (or whatever) in the evening, hunters and fisherwomen the next day etc. We want both to democratize work and to free all people from imposed labor demands in the post political economy.

mtbrad - Just what the hell are you accusing me of saying? Did I mention totalitarian equality? And is there any debate remaining over the "capitalisms harnessing of the negative aspects of human nature" issue? Cliche or not, the fact is the totalitarianism is totalitarianism from no matter the source, whether it be assholes in white collars or assholes in blue collars. I really do not understand why you are attacking what I have said, esp as it supports most of what you have advocated in the first place (or at least I thought so). Perhaps it's the way I have said something. But if it is, kindly tell me exactly what you find issue with. As for privileged position, what the hell are you talking about? What privileged position? And what makes you think I even possess a privileged position? And just how do you define a "privileged position" in the first place?

I agree with most of Victor's points.

Why wouldn't you? He hasn't made any, other than to assuage your fear of onerous labor.

You accept the whole system and its rules, then work within it, or die.

Yes, that's exactly what I said. Can't get anything past you.

Anyway, any society has rules. In any society, if you don't like the rules, you can work to change them. More important, any society has an institutional structure. If you don't like that structure, you can work to change it. But first you have to understand what the current structure is, and you have to be able to describe the new structure you want.

That's what I get from his answer to my question about being allowed to make a living by selling my services

You've never given even five minutes thought to questions of allocation. You don't even know what the word means. You've probably never even heard the word in an economic context.

Parecon's method of allocation is not markets. No one "sells" anything, at least not in the context that you're thinking.

I already have the means and tools to do it between my ears and in my small tool kit, but in strict Parecon, there's no money to pay me or for me to buy things at the store.

Nope, not what I said. What I said is that you won't get any inputs from the economy. You don't know what that means though, because you don't understand allocation. You not only don't understand participatory planning, you don't even understand markets. If you did, you'd understand that there is no such thing as a classless market economy -- it's literally impossible.

If I survive, it's as a group of liked-minded Robinson Crusoes somewhere or, more likely, in a black market of some sort that will emerge, and perhaps be punished in some fashion.

Can't have a black market in a parecon. It's not that black markets aren't allowed. It's that the structure of a pareconish economy mitigates against black markets. About the only thing you could do in a parecon is trade with somebody. But accruing wealth via a black market is literally impossible in a parecon. I'm stretching the truth slightly here, but I'm close enough to being correct that I can get away with it. The simple fact is that black markets won't exist in a parecon, and it has nothing to do with legal reasons.

Wanna understand why? Read the book.

In other words, there's a democratic and dynamic side to the market in goods and services, having to do with choice, that Parecon ignores or denigrates.

No. There's no market at all in parecon. (By "market" I mean an institional method of resource allocation -- the only meaningful way to use the term "market" in this discussion. I do not mean there won't be a place for people to get vegetables, or whatever.)

My question about 'fair share' to Eb was not about renumeration, but who decides my 'fair share' of less than desirable tasks.

This is actually a good question. The short answer is that everyone works a balanced job complex comparable in its empowerment effects and the onerousness of its work to the balanced job complexes worked by everyone else in the economy. That is, in terms of empowerment and onerousness (or, if you prefer, in terms of desirability), everyone's BJC is the same as everyone else's BJC, all across the economy.

The long answer as to how this happens requires an understanding of parecon's allocation process (participatory planning). I'm not going to give you the long answer here. Read the book. (Eh, maybe I'll change my mind by the time I get to the bottom of this post, or maybe not. We'll see...)

And while 'right effort' is one eighth of Buddhism's Eightfold Path, how it's to be decided fairly or effectively by committee still is problematic.

This is another good question. Who determines if you're pulling your weight? Your co-workers. How can workers evaluate each others' efforts? It happens all the time. Your co-workers aren't idiots. They're doing the same work as you. You know who's slacking. They know who's slacking. It's pretty easy stuff, actually. Anyone who has ever worked a job knows this.

Your next question will likely be something like, "What if my co-workers hate me and want to screw me?" The answer is you all work BJCs. No one is permanently in a position of power over you. Sometimes, you're in a position of power over them, depending on the task, or maybe day of the week, or however an individual workplaces decides the specific of its internal structure. But everyone in the economy works a BJC. You have no permanent "boss." No one else does either. If someone wanted to screw you, he'd be cutting off his nose to spite his face, because odds are good you'd just give it right back to him down the road -- perhaps even the same day. It would be economically illogical given the structural constraints of the economy for someone to try taking "money" (have to use this word carefully) out of your pocket.

My strategic goal is to get to the classless

Not with market-based allocation you won't.

stateless

This is just stupid. Any society has legislative, enforcement, and adjudicative requirements. They can't be wished away. The solution is not to have a "stateless" society, but rather, to have better institutions to accomplish the quite necessary political functions of legislation, execution, and adjudication.

because of abundance

When the oil runs out, it's going to take your "abundance" (if not the human race) with it.

marketless society

Okay, well, this is good...

of fully cybernated communism everywhere, where, as Marx put it, the free development of each is the necessary condition for the free development of all, where toil is done away with, and work, for the most part, becomes play.

...and this is nonsense. Allocation by central planning is authoritarian. For someone who's worried about parecon that "You accept the whole system and its rules, then work within it," advocating a society whose method of allocation is central planning only makes sense if you plan on being one the central planners -- a nice coordinatorist aspiration, certainly, but hardly congenial to working-class liberation.

Oh, it's also nonsense because you suffer from the same problem Brad has: You think we can have a mythical, magical, dream-like world where shitty tasks no longer exist. Evidently, such thinking is a coordinatorist thing. No working-class person would ever entertain ridiculous views like "work is play." Only a coordinator can pull that off.

That's way far off, but I think, so far anyway, that Schweickart's Economic Democracy model, which we can see at work on a relatively practical scale in Mondragon, offers a far more practical means of leaving the current system behind and then getting from here to there. But I'll admit, I'm an admirer of Dewey's instrumental theory of truth, rather than any coherence theory.

You might want to find out what Schweickart and Dewey think about allocation. It's a pretty important question when discussing economic theory and vision. I haven't read anything by Schweickart, but I'm betting dollars to donuts he's a market enthusiast. I'm mildly interested to know ... but not interested enough to look.

As for participatory democracy, a term popularized by Dewey

I hate the term "participatory democracy." It's stupid, empty, meaningless, and quite prone to co-optation by coordinatorists. As a tangential sidenote, I also hate the term "the bosses" because it obscures the existence of the coordinator class.

I'm also an admirer of Locke over Rousseau.

I'm not Noam Chomsky. I've never read anything by either of these guys. Don't plan to, either.

The latter wants the individual to submit to the 'general will,' which you can see in Eb's 'go along with the plan or die' attitude.

No, you don't have to die. Just like on the desert island, you pull your weight or starve. There's nothing authoritarian about that -- unless you're a coordinator whose idea of "pulling his weight" means going to management seminars and making big decisions about when we're all getting new linen carts.

I'm for a more libertarian socialism than what Parecon seems to be offering.

Why not, since "libertarian socialism" has no structure? You may as well be for world peace, or kids and families.

I'm skipping allocation for now...

You attack me by claiming that I don't understand my own postition, which is not it at all, I understand my postition better than you understand yours.

I didn't say you didn't understand your position. To the contrary, I think you understand your position quite well. I'm just telling you your position is a load of horse shit.

To review, you said:

Your point about the difference between choosing to do 'shit work' and having to is the point. In a classless society there would be no have to. Therefore, there would be no difference and everyone could choose to do what ever they want to and there would be no 'shit work' per se.

You're just wishing away shit work.

But as I re-read this, there's something else worth addressing. You say that "everyone could choose to do what ever they want to." This is absurd. There's no recognition that not all tasks -- not jobs, tasks -- are created equally. That is, there's no recognition that some tasks are simply more pleasant or more empowering than other tasks.

Only a privileged person could hold such a view. No working-class person would ever even be able to entertain such a thought. What if people gravitate in large numbers toward certain tasks and away from others? That's okay, because in your mythical world that won't happen.

In your mythical world, everyone's made of sugar and spice and we'll all play nice and all the tasks are the same and we won't have to worry about how we apportion them. It's kind of like a Marxist saying we should only have one culture or one religion. You know, hey, we wouldn't fight over culture if we'd all just adopt one. Of course, in practice, this means we all adopt white culture, even if we're not white.

In your world, we just adopt one view of all the tasks -- they're all the same to you. But in your world, I know damn good and well who's going to be doing the shitty tasks. And it won't be you.

As I stated earlier, I actually prefer to do both 'shit work' and mental labor in a balance.

Wanting to do shit work -- you're still putting it in quotes -- and having to do it are two different things. You're privileged, so you actually have a choice.

I think most people would and could in a classless society.

In your society, why wouldn't they? In your society, it doesn't exist, because you've just wished shitty tasks out of existence.

There are no good jobs and no 'shit jobs' if you remove the class oppression and socialization of hierarchy.

Shit "job" or shit "work?" A job is a set of tasks. In a parecon, everyone works a balanced job complex, which is a fair mix of empowering versus rote tasks. Job complexes are balanced across the economy. But shitty tasks still exist -- indeed, everyone has to do their fair share of them.

But is a BJC shitty? Only to a coordinator or capitalist. To a worker, a BJC is real freedom. In your world though, there aren't even any shitty tasks, because, again, you wish them out of existence. But we're moving in circles again. Maybe Victor can spice things up with all the quotes I know I can depend on him to bring up from Albert's Parecon and other assorted writings on the topic.

I think you think that the only reason shitty tasks are shitty tasks is because society "says" they're shitty tasks. I think you think that in a good society, we'll all just stop calling shit work shit work, and voila! It will stop being unpleasant, undesirable work. It's like a Madison avenue re-branding trick. You tell people the Corvair they're buying is actually a Corvette, and then you sell them the Corvair ... while people like you are still rolling around in 'Vettes. Us Corvair drivers are supposed to just not notice that we're driving around in shit cars while you're pampering yourself in a hot sports rig, because you've glazed our eyes over to think that all cars are really the same -- when anyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size can see they're not. Well, clearly, if you're a 'Vette driver, that won't do. So you have keep hammering into the brains of us Corvair drivers over and over that all cars are the same, all cars are the same, all cars are the same ... and if you're lucky, us Corvair drivers might start believing the bullshit.

Well, it works for Madison avenue. Hell, it might just work for you too. That is, if working people really are as stupid as you think they are.

You have to break out of the competitive, class based capitalist mentality in order to grasp the fecundity and creative possibilities of human society.

For your next trick, why don't you call me a "young Hegelian."

Sorry, irresistible inside joke...

Parecon is a model riddled with specialist jargon, non-intuitive rules, overly distributed decision-making, and requiring a fictional mindset wholly unrealistic in its assumptions about the nature of people and how they best live and work and derive happiness and security.

Can you give us a quote from Albert's Parecon (or anything else that's been written on the model) -- which I'm sure you're familiar with -- to give us an idea of what you're talking about?

The most dark and frightening thing is that folks like Victor continue to maintain their privledged postion without even coming up with relavent arguments, constantly falling back on the old tired cliche of "totalitarian equality" and "capitalisms harnessing of the negative aspects of human nature".

I read the book when it first came out, preordered it before it was released actually. You are still not getting it about the differnt socially constructed attitudes towards different jobs. You are looking at a post-capitalist society and applying capitalist society ideas concerning the division of labor. You attack me by claiming that I don't understand my own postition, which is not it at all, I understand my postition better than you understand yours. As I stated earlier, I actually prefer to do both 'shit work' and mental labor in a balance. I think most people would and could in a classless society. The hierarchy that you hate so much is the result of classes, not some a priori ranking of jobs. There are no good jobs and no 'shit jobs' if you remove the class oppression and socialization of hierarchy. You have to break out of the competitive, class based capitalist mentality in order to grasp the fecundity and creative possibilities of human society.

This entire conversation presents two extreme, and in my mind, equally dark and frightening economic models - unbridled capitalism, the current system, and parecon, another "wish-I-had-all-the-power" model. In the one case, we are presented with oppression by the elite. In the other, oppression by the masses. In either case, you acquire the mindset and drive and religious fervor of the oppressor, or, as stated, you simply die off, and good riddance to you anyway. And while today's capitalistic (or perhaps more accurately, "corporatist") model, takes into account and openly exploits the more negative aspects of human nature (greed and selfishness and hunger for power), parecon on the other hand, doesn't seem to recognize that tyranny can come in many forms - from afar with a socially distant elite, to the near with a domineering worker-owner society controlling your every work task. Parecon is a model riddled with specialist jargon, non-intuitive rules, overly distributed decision-making, and requiring a fictional mindset wholly unrealistic in its assumptions about the nature of people and how they best live and work and derive happiness and security. The entire concept gives the appearance of being thought out by someone with a very limited exposure to humanness, or perhaps by a committee who's somehow lost touch with the problem they were trying to solve in the first place. It's got an almost unnatural air about it. Its mindset reminds me of that of a scientifically gifted person who truly believes they can reduce the creation of the Mona Lisa to a set of rules. He starts with one rule- get a brush, some paint, a canvas and a weasel. But after that, things seem to just get more and more complex, full of if's, and's, but's and rules built upon rules. With parecon, I can see nothing presented that fires the imagination of man. Nothing to lift the spirit and drive hope. Nothing that speaks to the masses and gives them the will to effect change in the world. At least both capitalism and communism had core components that the masses could rally around. With parecon you have to read the book to even begin to comprehend what parecon is trying to offer. Unfortunately, the reality is that there exist huge numbers of people in this world who either can't and don't wish to read. Perhaps they should also die off. Parecon can never succeed, because it is already dead upon arrival - lifeless, bloodless and without spirit. And like any dead thing, people tend to avoid it, or bury it. There are much, much better alternatives.

I told you. You're asking questions that require you to read the book. The only way to answer your questions is to introduce the entire model.

But okay...

No 'pledge' required because EVERYONE MUST do less desirable tasks, in rotation of some sort, whether they want to or not.

Everyone must work a balanced job complex. That means everyone does their fair share of shit work. Not sure I like the word "rotation" but it's good enough for a first approximation, I guess.

So how is it enforced?

You mean if you don't want to work, I presume. Parecon doesn't prejudge this. However, I would argue that parecon should let able-bodied people who don't want to work starve to death. I'm not doing your work for you.

Who decides MY 'fair share.'

Remuneration is for effort and sacrifice only. Remuneration might be for number of hours worked (since everyone works a BJC), or maybe with an effort rating assigned by your peers. Perhaps it will vary from workplace to workplace, or industry to industry.

There will be no large disparities in income though. Remuneration is for effort and sacrifice, not power or output. Job complexes are balanced across the economy. So to make more, you can work more hours, or work the hours you work at higher intensity. There are limits though as to how many additional hours one person can work, and how much more intensely one person can work.

That assumes you're in a parecon where there are workplaces that give effort ratings for intensity. You might be, you might not be. Parecon doesn't prejudge this. What the model says though is that remuneration is for effort and sacrifice only.

Do I get fired or have to quit if I don't go along?

As far as I'm concerned, those who can work but don't want to can literally die. That includes you.

Am I allowed to organize to win over a majority of the workers at a Parecon institution to severely alter or do away with the 'balances'?

Yes. In a mature parecon, good luck with that though.

If I win, are we allowed to ignore the principle?

If you win? Dismantling parecon after it's implemented? Um, good luck with that. But hey, if you win, you win. You won't, but if you feel the need to dream...

If I lose, and I am cast out, are my credits for getting my food from the communal stores wiped out, so I have to forage for food?

As I said, if you are capable of working, but just don't want to, you can die. Literally. I'm not carrying your lazy ass.

If I and other like-minded workers decide to set up our own firm where we ignore 'balancing,' are we allow to continue without being punished?

Yes, but you'll also be continuing with nothing to do. The economy will not allocate you any inputs, thus you'll have no outputs, thus you won't be working, thus you'll die. Under my preferred version of parecon anyway. Other, nicer people might allocate you bread and water. I, however, as has already been duly noted, am a prick.

Are we brought before a court?

Parecon doesn't prejudge this. I would say no. I would say we simply wait for you to die. Others may feel differently.

Are we fined or jailed?

See previous answer.

Or, if I just want to survive, can I set up a computer repair shop, and sell my services?

Go back three answers. Actually, check that. You can petition the economy for resources if you want to start a pareconish workplace. You might be able to do it. But since what you're wanting to do is escape the economy, the real answer is no.

If I get too many customers to handle alone, and hire some young apprentices, or just other workers, to help me, and we agree on the pay scale and division of tasks among ourselves, will we be shut down by the police, or whatever the enforcers are called, of what Parecon deems we MUST do?

No one will work for you, even if they were permitted to. They have no reason to. And, again, the economy won't allocate you any resources.

The devil is in the details here.

That's why you need to read to book.

Your point about the difference between choosing to do 'shit work' and having to is the point. In a classless society there would be no have to. Therefore, there would be no difference and everyone could choose to do what ever they want to and there would be no 'shit work' per se.

This claim is total horse shit. You're wishing away the unpleasant tasks that are going to exist in any economy. I could just re-post what I wrote two (I think it was) posts ago. You know, the one that prompted you to call me a prick.

On another note, you got indignant at first when I called shit work shit work, and now you've taken to putting "shit work" in quotes. This is a reflection of your deep coordinator-class bias.

If shit work isn't shit work, but rather just some tasks in the economy that some people prefer not to do but others don't mind doing, then the fact that you prefer not to do them is no big deal, since others don't mind doing them in your stead.

But if shit work is really shit work, then that means you are unfairly skating on the labor of others who are doing work that you don't want to -- and that they don't want to either. You'd have to face up to the unfairness of this situation. You'd have to look in the mirror and admit that you're benefiting from the labor of others in performing tasks that neither you nor they want to. But you're privileged, so you don't have to. They, lacking the privileges you take for granted, have no such luxury.

The solution for the class-biased person like yourself is to prattle on about there being no shit work in a classless society. Other variations on this theme include nonsense about zero-hour workdays:

Our book mentioned above, however, wants to abolish all classes, including the working class, primarily by reducing the amount of living labor time in any commodity towards zero, and shrinking the working day towards zero.

It's all just a way for persons with deep coordinator-class biases to avoid facing those biases in the mirror, the way any intellectually honest person should -- just like the way men should face their gender privileges, or whites should face their racial privileges -- but so often simply refuse to, because they don't have to.

Since we have now gone in a two-post circle, I am assuming this thread is complete. It's certainly been quite enlightening for me. I want to thank Mitchell for his blog post, and especially for all the work he did in debating Schweickart.

Sadly, it seems that parecon still has a long way to go before the broad left will even be able to begin thinking about it, much less implementing it. Workers' rights are still a long way off. "With friends like these..."

There was a discussion here about two years ago, I think, about whether quoting others was appropriate or not. The final outcome was that it was not appropriate as it lended to an argumental type of discussion instead of people making comments. Moral of the story, STOP QUOTING OTHER POSTERS. Instead think things through and try and convince people. Your point about the difference between choosing to do 'shit work' and having to is the point. In a classless society there would be no have to. Therefore, there would be no difference and everyone could choose to do what ever they want to and there would be no 'shit work' per se. Think about it.

Incidentally, suppose a few dozen of us were stranded on a desert island after a plane crash or something. Of course, we'd better get busy lest we all starve. Okay, so we do that. Then someone among us says, "You know, I really don't feel up to working anymore. The sun's hot, the sand digs into my feet, and I'd really have more fun just swimming in the ocean. Why don't you all do my work for me?"

How would you react to that? Well, perhaps the person has a very bad foot injury as a result of the crash. He really can't walk very well, and soaking it in the ocean helps alleviate the pain. Okay, fine. I don't think any of us would have a problem with that.

But suppose he's in perfect health. Now what's the reaction of everyone else likely to be? That's when Eric goes into real "prick" mode: "What the fuck do you mean, you don't want to work? We're trying to survive, and you just want to swim all day? You fucking bastard."

Then comes the reply from the person: "Well, you know, I'm a really smart guy, and I think my skills would serve the group better if you let me coordinate the work that you all do. I've got a college degree and I know a lot about computers and stuff. So just let me manage all the tasks you all do, and everything will be done a whole lot more efficiently."

Now Eric, formerly in "prick" mode, goes ballistic. But honestly, so would everyone else. And so would you.

But in a mature capitalist economy, this is exactly what we have. Lazy managerial fuckers who don't want to carry their fair share of the load. And it's institutionalized. And they're used to it. They've grown accustomed to their class privileges. And when someone, like me, calls them on it, they react vitriolically. It's funny, but people don't much like the idea of giving up privileges they've gotten used to having.

Men don't like it. Whites don't like it. And coordinators don't like it. Strange how that all works.

I wish I weren't the only person around here who ever quoted anybody. The target keeps moving. Oh well...

I have worked many, many working class jobs. I have also worked a few white collar jobs and to honest I am not sure which ones I prefered.

Wanting to do shit work and having to do shit work are two different things.

I also know many people who choose to do what you so arrogantly call 'shit jobs', but are very qualified for what I guess you would call better jobs.

Wanting to do shit work and having to do shit work are two different things.

If you think that changing geriatric diapers is the epitome of mannual labor or what you call 'shit jobs', then you have no clue what the real world is like or what real labor is.

I called it an "example." However, we could always substitute cleaning up toxic waste, working at McDonald's, driving a bus, cleaning toilets, working in a coal mine, answering the phone all day. Such work exists. In a good society, everyone must do their fair share of it. Carl has already intimated he'd prefer to pay someone more than do his fair share of the work:

If Parecon requires that everyone sign a pledge to do the work you describe, you're not going to get very far. Most people would simply rather pay people who do jobs that are less than desirable more to do them, or give them more free time, or some other benefit.

When it was finally made clear to him that, indeed, this was a requirement of parecon, he reacted more strongly:

Do I get fired or have to quit if I don't go along? Am I allowed to organize to win over a majority of the workers at a Parecon institution to severely alter or do away with the 'balances'? [emphasis added; and incidentally, when translated, the boldface part here means, "I don't want to do my fair share of shit work."] If I win, are we allowed to ignore the principle? If I lose, and I am cast out, are my credits for getting my food from the communal stores wiped out, so I have to forage for food?

If I and other like-minded workers decide to set up our own firm where we ignore 'balancing,' are we allow to continue without being punished? Are we brought before a court? Are we fined or jailed?

This is the typical coordinatorist reaction to the idea of balanced job complexes. At some level though, they must realize how selfish such sentiments are, because then they slip from bad-cop mode to good-cop:

But frankly, I think the guys, as much as they might appreciate a hand at this stuff, would rather I spend the time finding more new and interesting ways to teach them new things

Translated into English, this means, "Hey, you know, working-class people don't really want me to waste my talents doing their work anyway. It's better for all concerned if I keep doing my more privileged intellectual work, and even the workers agree."

I'm sure that in the mid-19th century, there were slaves who thought ending slavery was a bad idea. The unknown of it probably frightened them. That doesn't mean it was wrong to end chattel slavery.

However, the real point in going back and quoting Carl is that, I wonder, is your reaction any different? In a parecon, everyone must work a balanced job complex. For people who refuse? Well, parecon does not prejudge. However, as far as I personally am concerned, those who don't want to work (who are able) can starve to death.

Back to quoting you now:

You are a prick my friend.

Trust me, you are seeing the positively genteel me. I haven't even come close to "prick" mode yet.

You have some nerve ebpatten! You are telling me that I know nothing about being working class, what a bunch of self involved bull shit. You really need to get over yourself. I have worked many, many working class jobs. I have also worked a few white collar jobs and to honest I am not sure which ones I prefered. Of course, the pay was better at the latter. I also know many people who choose to do what you so arrogantly call 'shit jobs', but are very qualified for what I guess you would call better jobs. If you think that changing geriatric diapers is the epitome of mannual labor or what you call 'shit jobs', then you have no clue what the real world is like or what real labor is. Who the hell do you think you are telling me what I do for a living. You are a prick my friend. Good luck convincing the world that you have the perfect plan for human society while you are putting down what people do.

Saying there will be no jobs people won't want to do is not only highly offensive, it's stupid.

You don't have a clue what goes on in the real world. You don't have a a clue what it means to be working-class. You just don't get it.

I frankly think I will be wasting my time trying to explain it to you. But against my better judgment ... let's just take one example. You won't listen to it, but I'll try it anyway.

Are there going to be any old people in your "non-market driven competitive society?" Any of these old people going to be living in nursing homes? Any of these old people in nursing homes going to have to wear Attends (adult diapers) because they're incontinent of stool? Will these elderly people no longer need to be cleaned up in your mythical world? Will literal shit stop existing just because you want it to? You know, stool isn't always nice and compact. Sometimes people have shit all the way down their legs. But this doesn't mean anything to you, because you just wish it out of existence. And people like me have to clean up what you gleefully pretend does not exist.

The thing is, the shit's there, and people like me are cleaning it up while you and Carl are sharing a latte and looking over the books, patting yourselves on the back over your fine management skills.

If you are going to insult me you have to give me a reason. How is it insulting to say that all jobs have value and in a non-market driven competitive society there would be no jobs that people did not want to do?

It would replace the suits need for physical fitness by going to the gym with a few hours of ditch digging or farm labor. People would prefer to do the 'shit work' as it would be the hight of the society. I have direct experience with this drive to get back in touch with the physical as I worked on an organic community supported farm for a few years. Elite Yuppies loved to come out and get dirty and sweat, it had cultural cache and made them feel whole.

The tragically funny part is that you have no idea how offensive this is. In a way, it's not even your fault. I guess that's what Jesus meant when he said, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

You really don't have a clue.

So it is the presence of a coordinator class that is at fault for the continuation of a class based society? What role do the bourgeoisie play in a paracon analysis? Do you really think the best approch to a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and class is to argue and analyze from a tripartite separation of class intersts? Or, would it be wiser to place the coordinators into the class with the laborers and construct a broad based movement against the bourgeoisie? I would also argue against your assertion that there is such a thing as 'shit work'. This is a social construct resulting from a class stratified division of labor. Any analysis that claims that some work is better than some other is still in a capitalist consciousness, or as Marx said it is a bourgeois definition of right and bears the birthmark of the old society. In a truly post-capitalist and post-class soceity there would be no 'shit jobs', everyone would be educated to the highest level desired and would be allowed to choose the best application of their creative and mannual capacities. It would replace the suits need for physical fitness by going to the gym with a few hours of ditch digging or farm labor. People would prefer to do the 'shit work' as it would be the hight of the society. I have direct experience with this drive to get back in touch with the physical as I worked on an organic community supported farm for a few years. Elite Yuppies loved to come out and get dirty and sweat, it had cultural cache and made them feel whole.

Yes, I knew that was coming as soon as I posted it. I've quoted you extensively in this thread, and you can't be bothered to quote me until you find one word you can jump on.

You are an elitist snob, and I'm finished with you.

I believe there are two issues here: One is, what will it look like once we get there? And two, how do we get there? Certainly, it would be advisable not to have Homer Simpson run the power plants right now. We need expertise in certain critical areas, be it surgery or engineering or whatever. Right now, only certain people have that expertise. I am definitely not the person you want performing an appendectomy on you if you have appendicitis.

However, in a mature parecon -- and this begins to go toward issue 1, whoever performs appendectomies will also have to do their fair share of shit work. They won't be doctors in the 2007-sense of the word, though they will perform many of the same tasks that doctors in 2007 do. But in addition to medical tasks such as perform surgery, they will also do work currently done by, say, nurses and nurse aides, or perhaps even, say, janitors. The point is that, in a mature parecon, everyone works a balanced job complex, even people who occasionally perform surgery.

The second issue is, how do we get there? There are people who could answer this question infinitely better than me. However, it seems to me that it is absolutely vital, among whatever else is done, to raise consciousness about the existence of the coordinator class. I don't offer that as a comprehensive list. I offer it as what I believe to be one of many necessary conditions.

I'm not a hardcore Buddhist, but I'd read a decent amount (admittedly, "decent" is a relative term, but I've read more about Buddhism than I suspect most people have). There is an excellent book called Diamond Mind: A Psychology of Meditation by Rob Nairn, that was recommended to me by one of the Davids (Edwards or Cromwell) at Media Lens. (The Davids have read a lot of works on Buddhism, and have surely forgotten more about it than I will ever know.)

Anyway, Nairn talks about "mindfulness" -- knowing what is happening while it is happening. When we practice meditation -- well, those of us who do it, or occasionally do it, as in my case -- mindfulness naturally develops. We become aware of what Nairn calls "hidden reefs" -- viz., expectations, goals, assumptions -- in our minds, which cause our minds not to be tranquil, and prevent us from having insights into the way our minds work.

But as mindfulness develops, we begin to naturally see these hidden reefs. We don't have to try to make it happen, it just happens -- just like a child eats, and (unless the child is an Iraqi child shot by a U.S. soldier, or black child shot by a white police officer, or some such) grows up without trying, so too the development of mindfulness naturally makes our minds tranquil. (It's not that mindfulness makes us stop feeling or thinking, or even experiencing painful emotions, it's just that, even when we experience painful emotions, we can still be tranquil.)

In my opinion, raising consciousness about the existence of the coordinator class will work the same way. The more people are aware of its existence, the more people will naturally seek structures that seek to eliminate the structural basis of the class in the economy. If you really understand the classism is more than just how capitalists look at workers as tools, but also how coordinators do so as well, and how the 2007 left is so heavily a coordinator-class based movement, then it is my belief that people will naturally want to work to correct this. Not the coordinators, though. Most of them will feel their privileges threatened, and they will fight back -- chiefly, I think, by denying that they even constitute a separate class, by falling back on Marx's two-class model, instead of looking honestly at Albert and Hahnel's three-class model.

I also believe it is important to begin implementing BJCs in left organizations right now -- but again, that won't happen without a fight. If unions weren't the coordinatorist organizations they currently are, and instead were truly representative of working people, they would seek to educate workers about the fundamental points of parecon: Its reliance on BJCs, workers' councils, self management, and the replacement of markets by participatory planning.

Unions would teach workers that every economy has allocation. There is no way to not deal with the question of allocation when grappling with an economic model. In the U.S., where we have capitalism, allocation of resources between producers and consumers is done via competitive markets, which have all sorts of horrible effects on people and the environment. In the former Soviet Union, allocation was done via central planning, which also has horrible effects.

In both cases, the structural pressures of markets and central planning both give rise to class divisions. It is impossible to have an economy of scale whose mode of allocation is one of these two and also have a classless society. It can't be done. Even in the former Yugoslavia, where there were no capitalists, class divisions still existed, because the market-based allocation of the Yugoslav economy forced class divisions on the workplaces: Workers were ruled by coordinators. In the former USSR, there were also no capitalists, but allocation by central planning caused the same class division between coordinators and workers. But if one doesn't have the concept "coordinator" in her or his conceptual toolbox, then both Yugoslavia and the USSR look like classless societies.

Unions should educate workers about this. There can be no worker liberation without a new allocation mechanism. Pareconists believe that participatory planning is just such an allocation mechanism. Unions should also work to implement pareconish norms internally, but this won't happen without a fight. Sweeney and Stern are CEOs, not workers. They're coordinators.

There can be no worker liberation without BJCs. If you read Michael Albert's new book Remembering Tomorrow, he talks about the beginnings of South End Press. There were about 8 or 10 people who got together to form it. They wanted a democratic workplace. Parecon didn't exist as a theory. But they realized that if someone answered the phone all day, or did janitorial work all day, while someone else did fundraising all day, or talked to authors all day, then the people with the empowering jobs would eventually run SEP and dominate those who answered the phone all day. Hence, BJCs were born out of necessity, to create and maintain a truly democratic work environment. Without BJCs, there can be no worker liberation, because people like me will always be doing shit work for people wearing nice clothes and sitting behind desks.

Yes, if Cuban doctors go to Pakistan to help earthquake victims right now, or if they go to Venezuela to help poor people in the countryside where Venezuelan doctors refuse to go, I am not suggesting those Cuban doctors should be working BJCs right now. But 100 years from now, different conditions must exist. It is perfectly within the power of society to train more people to do medical tasks, so that, at that time, all people doing those tasks will work BJCs. Between then and now? In my opinion, it starts with raising consciousness, and with supporting pareconish efforts like The NewStandard or Z.

I don't know. The limits of my activism include talking to people and passing out radical propaganda. (Just this morning I gave away another copy of What Uncle Sam Really Wants and the latest issue of Z.) I'm no expert. But at the very minimum, I think, people must acknowledge the existence of the coordinator class. I support women's rights even though I'm a chauvinist. I support civil rights even though I'm a racist. And even though I'm a classist, I support workers' rights. But although I am not non-white and I am not female, I am a member of the working class. And as a worker I can tell you that there will never truly be working-class liberation until people are able to honestly look at the existence of the coordinator class, and its implications.

We seem to have skipped past the revolution or maybe not. Eric or anyone is it the (or your) pareconish position that the revolution is to plan and form and work through parecon institutions and for everyone (including alleged coordinator class agent Carl Davidson) start doing balanced job complexes right now...or are we discussing what the post-capitalist world should look like in a relatively distant future?  Perhaps pareconistas want to plant the seeds within the womb of the old and (I wish) dying state corporate Daskapitalism...to have a bunch of alternative institutions up and running when it all comes down?  I guess my question (not hostile, though possibly under-informed) is where and how does parecon relate to struggle within and against the current system?  I confess to being sort of eclectically (if radically democratic) left (kind of like the Chicago left of the Haymarket era when you had all kinds of interesting anticapitalist folks - Lassalleans, Marxists, left-anarchs and more) fighting for the Eight Hour Day and (for many) the end of Wage Slavery (see the chapter titled "Bakunin Never Slept Here" in left anarchist historian Bruce C. Nelson's book Beyond the Martyrs) and tend to think that beggars can't be choosers when it comes to left allies in really existing society.  It would be wonderful to be at the point where this sort of debate was the main issue. 

Carl's point is a good one about the doctors in the AIDS-infested villages but the practical concerns about expertise in really existing society extend to daily life here in the 'rich nations.' I'm writing from Iowa City about a mile east of a power plant where I have eminently non-elitist reasons to have the trained engineeers not the guys with GEDs in charge of the dials and steam flows.  A lot of the coordinator (or whatever) class's position seems written into the very "relations [and even forces] of production" and there would seem to be enormous technical difficulties that would obviously have to be resolved.

I imagine this is addressed in Albert's big work and confess to not knowing all that work yet (very high on my list...I admit to spending 98.7 of my intellectual energy on critizicizing the existing system) and worrying above all about the difficulty the American left, such as it, shows even in forming a coherent antiwar (anti-empire, not just anti Iraq War) movement that is more than a pale reflection of earlier antiwar struggles.

I already have Albert's 'Realizing Hope: Life Beyond Capitalism' on my desk now, 'ebpatton,' and a going through it. So be careful with your 'nevers.'

Different book. Parecon preceded Realizing Hope. Parecon is an in-depth description to answer your questions. It's pointless for me to introduce the entire model. If you seriously want to under parecon, read the book. Then come back, and I'll answer any question you want. But I'm not addressing the entire model here.

But to continue it anyway, you make an odd assertion. The capitalist class is certainly aware that it's a class. For the most part, the working class is too, although some have 'middle class' pretensions.

In a pareconish sense, the term "middle class" has no meaning whatsoever. It's not a concept in the model. Not that you're claiming it is, I'm just pointing it out.

Same with small producers.

What?

Yet you want to make a rather unique claim that the 'coordinator class' can't be aware of itself.

No, I have never said any such thing. I have not said the coordinator class "can't" be aware of itself. I have said, rather, that it isn't. Because it's not. You're living proof.

Why?

Because for the coordinator class to recognize itself would entail a tacit admission of unfair privileges within the economy. Coordinators would have to admit that it's not fair (for example) for nurse aides to be doing all the ass-wiping, while they (the coordinators) get to wear Armani suits and make important decisions all day.

In a roundabout way, that's a backhanded recognition of my point, it can't be aware of itself as a class because it doesn't exist as a separate class, but that's not what you're trying to get at, I'm sure.
What?

To be sure, there are people whose main task in making a living is coordination, but, as I asserted earlier, they can be in any one of three classes--workers, capitalists and self-employed small producers. What's wrong with that working hypothesis? I'm not denying the people or the work they do, or that they're part of a class according to the nature of their relation to ownership of the means of production. We could even call them a strata, if you like, but to call them a class in their own right would mean tossing out what I consider a perfectly good Marxist conception of class.

Karl Marx was a genius, and he got a lot of things right. But Marxism has a fatal flaw (actually more than one, but for our purposes, one is enough): It gets the economy wrong. Capitalism is a three-class economy, not a two-class economy. The only person who would argue that a nurse aide is equivalent to a doctor, since neither owns the hospital, is a member of the coordinator class.

That is, class relations do not just arise from a difference in ownership relations. They also arise from a difference in runs the workplaces the capitalists own. Capitalists themselves do not run them. They can't. So they hire coordinators to do it for them. And therein lies the basis for the third class -- the class that does not like to see itself.

Here's another point to think over. PARECON seems to make a claim that it's a classless society, when it's not. It has one very large class, a working class, and a few small producers.

Parecon has one class, or, if you prefer, no classes. I don't know where you're imagining these "small producers" from. Of course, some workplaces, or perhaps even whole industries, might be "small," but parecon does not prejudge this. People make these types of allocation decisions in light of true social costs and benefits.

Our book mentioned above, however, wants to abolish all classes, including the working class, primarily by reducing the amount of living labor time in any commodity towards zero, and shrinking the working day towards zero.

Honestly, this a ridiculous claim. "Shrinking the working day towards zero?" It's time to put the bong down and slowly back away. In any society, there will be work that must be done. We can't just sit on the beach all day drinking mai tais.

Full cybernation takes a while, but it's a rather different approach than PARECOM

It's got to be much different if it involves, what, rampant hedonism as the economic activity of choice?

This conversation is getting pointless though. You and David Schweickart build your movement, us pareconists will build ours, and in 75 years we'll see who wins.

However, you won't do this, because, as I guessed in my very first post, you're a member of the coordinator class. That's why you've denied its existence from the beginning -- because you're in it, and the coordinator class can never see itself. Even if by some fluke, you did happen to read Parecon, you'd hate it ... much like you do now.

Now it's time for you to read Michael Albert's Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso Press, 2003).

But on reflection over the years, and considering the problems I've seen in that part of the world, and how people can suffer from the lack of things these people would be doing at their regular jobs, I've thought better of it. And it 'remoulded consciousness' alright. Even many of the peasants though it a waste, and overthrew the Gang of Four first chance they got.

Incidentally, this argument about how "people can suffer from the lack of things these people would be doing at their regular jobs" is elitist. It rests on the assumption that the rest of the population has no trainable talents. In a mature parecon, everyone will be trained up to the level of their capability. Yes, there is an opportunity cost when a doctor wipes a patient's ass instead of performing surgery. But since someone must wipe that patient's ass, there in an opportunity cost no matter who does -- unless one assumes only those currently working as doctors are qualified to perform surgery, and that no one else can be trained to do it.

The fact is that there is so much talent and human potential wasted under capitalism. Any fair economy is going to train people up to their potential -- which more than off-sets a few doctors having to wipe asses, or lawyers having to do their own filing, or managers having to swing a mop sometimes.

If Parecon requires that everyone sign a pledge to do the work you describe, you're not going to get very far. Most people would simply rather pay people who do jobs that are less than desirable more to do them, or give them more free time, or some other benefit.

No, parecon requires no signed "pledge." However, parecon does require that everyone work a balanced job complex. That means everyone must do some shit work. In a parecon, one may not simply remunerate the garbage collector more highly than the doctor in order to ensure that garbage collection gets done. Rather, everyone must do their fair share of garbage collection, or some other equivalent shit work.

No, use new technology to get rid of the worst toil, and pay more for that work that technology can't solve in the near term.

Just to reiterate the point: In a parecon, everyone must do their fair share of the "worst toil." No one is more highly compensated for doing it than someone else who is not doing it, because there is no someone else. Everyone is doing their fair share of the worst toil.

It is precisely this fact that so strongly motivates the economy to "use new technology to get rid of the worst toil" to the greatest extent possible, since, in a parecon, everyone benefits from the elimination of shit work -- unlike today, where some people benefit from increased profits, while others suffer due to having their livelihood automated out of existence.

In a parecon, paying "more for that work that technology can't solve" is not an option. The only option is that everyone do their fair share of shit work. And anything less is a violation of the rights of the working class.

I'm not interested in what you've done. I'm interested in knowing what you're willing to do. Are you willing to work a job where some of your regular tasks include, say, cleaning toilets or sweeping floors? How about backbreaking work like turning 300-lb. (or more) stroke patients on a ventilator? Or how about cleaning that patient up after they've contracted c-diff and have stool down to their knees?

Are you willing to do your fair share of this type of work? Or do you think it should be okay for you to sit in an office all day making important decisions while I break my back and expose myself to viruses like HIV and hepatitis C, or even tuberculosis -- all of which I have done ... and in a parecon, would likely do again.

You sound to me like a coordinator who doesn't want to do his fair share of shit work.

Carl writes:

Not only are your examples of PARECON in practice rather small, Mitch, they are VERY small.

I'd say they hardly, all together, reach the scale of 'The Farm' in Tennessee started by Stephen and Ida Mae Gaskin, along with a few old friends of mine. And I liked them all there, especially Ida Mae, renowned author of 'Spiritual Midwifery.' The Farm's still around, by the way, even though it's changed quite a bit.

Quoting my first post on the matter, I said the following:

Regarding currently-existing pareconish organizations, there are several I am aware of: Z (Woods Hole, MA), South End Press (Boston, MA), The NewStandard (Syracuse, NY), Cafe Mondragon (Winnipeg, MB), G7 Welcoming Committee Records (Winnipeg, MB), and Reverse Garbage (Brisbaine, Australia). In all these workplaces, which are all admittedly small, and all lacking in resources... [emphasis added]

Carl then writes:

But no one has yet answered my point that we certainly do have people who coordinate, or carry out coordinating tasks, and that they can be part of any one of three classes in modern society. But they are not a 'new class' themselves.

Now, in my first post, note that I wrote the following:

The only way I can imagine someone not seeing the existence of the coordinator class is by being a member of that class.

I also wrote that the coordinator class consists of people like doctors, lawyers, managers, and engineers. Now, observe that Carl writes that:

For instance, I'm on a design team of eight or so groups creating a new public (not a charter) high school in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side

Now, I don't know if this means Carl does this for a living, or if he's just some sort of volunteer. But it certainly sounds as if Carl is some sort of engineer or architect in his professional life. If this is indeed the case, then my prediction about members of the coordinator class being unable to see themselves as a class is confirmed.

Regarding parecon's values, Carl writes:

Equity: every worker has one vote, and the workers decide whateve differences there are in incomes.

Carl is not correctly defining equity, however. Equity (in a pareconish sense), means that people are remunerated for effort and sacrifice only, and not for power or output. Equity does not mean “one worker, one vote.” And equity means that income disparities are due only to people's unequal effort and sacrifice, nothing else.

Carl writes:

The coops also create their own schools and university, and choose younger workers, mainly, to attend them and enhance their skills. Not quite 'balanced job complexes', but if the workers thought they made sense, there's nothing stopping them from trying to do it.

If a workplace doesn't have balanced job complexes, it is not pareconish. Period. It may be more humane than General Motors, or remunerate more decently than Wal-Mart. But it is not pareconish.

Carl writes:

They have plenty of solidarity, and a 'social council' they elect by department, to serve both as a sort of trade union to buffer or counter any arrogance or favoritism, as well as attend to educational and social needs generally. Taken together, all that counts as self-management in my book.

Carl seems to be confusing values here. Self-management means, quite simply, that everyone has a say over decisions that affect their lives to the degree that those decisions affect their lives. Self-management is independent of solidarity (which means that systemic arrangement foster greater mutual concern and empathy, not less).

If there is a permanently entrenched coordinator class, neither self-management, solidarity, nor equity are going to exist. In the short-run, such values might be approximated. But it in the long-run, any violations of these norms are going to snowball to non-optimality. That is, there are no mechanisms to self-correct imbalances. It's like turning a bowl upside down and placing a marble on it. One slight puff of air and the marble is gone.

Parecon is designed to be turning the bowl right-side up. Now if the marble is moved, it returns eventually to the center. Problems do not snowball. Albert and Hahnel have demonstrated in Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics (Princeton Press, 1990) how in any market-based or centrally-planned economy, all sorts of deleterious effects are guaranteed to occur once any sort of imbalance occurs, even in “nice” theoretical models, let alone what actually happens in real-world economies.

But I digress...

Carl then writes:

The real question is, do we need coordination? But it seems strange even to ask it. Of course we do.

This is a straw man. No pareconist anywhere has ever claimed that coordination is not necessary. Of course those tasks exist in any economy. The issue is who does the tasks: A permanently entrenched class of people, that is, a small group of people who monopolize those tasks for themselves, while everyone else follows that small group's orders? Or will the tasks be fairly distributed among all workers as part of those workers' balanced job complexes?

Carl writes:

So coordinators, or those with the task of coordination, are going to be around for a while.

Again, of course coordination tasks are going to be around for a while. To be specific, such tasks are going to be around as long as human beings are – though human beings are not likely to be around much longer unless everyone is willing to do their fair share of swinging a mop or cleaning a toilet. The world can't take much more capitalism or coordinatorism (the former Soviet Union was hardly a clean place).

Carl writes:

The real question is can you select them, or get rid of them in good time if they don't do well, and train and select others who will.

Of course, in the real world, once a group of coordinators is selected, they are going to begin to consolidate their power and privileges, and insulate themselves from a workforce that itself is going to grow increasingly apathetic as they realize their voices don't count as much in decision-making, since they don't even know what's going on. That is, if one person sweeps a floor all day, while another one pours over the books, then the floor sweeper isn't going to be in position to do anything, or even know anything, if the bookkeeper is a nincompoop, or worse yet, is an embezzling criminal.

Carl writes:

I've worked in factories, as I'm sure many of you have.

And now, Carl is some sort of engineer or architect? Is this correct?

Carl writes:

But one of the first things they'll likely do is assign a group to be coordinators, from among themselves or hired from outside, or both, then give them an idea of what they want done, and keep on their case to coordinate the doing of it well.

Yes and no. This actually happened, by the way, in the former Yugoslavia. Workplaces there were formally worker controlled. Yet a U.S. Ford factory was indistinguishable from a Yugoslavian Yugo plant. Why? In Yugoslavia, there were no capitalists. And in Yugoslavia, the workers formally ran their own factories. So why was there coordinator-class rule there?

In a economy whose mode of resource allocation is markets, as is the case in the U.S. and was the case in the former Yugoslavia, firms must compete in order to survive. Firms must maximize profits, or else there won't be a firm. How do firms maximize profits? They cut wages and benefits, increase the number of hours everyone has to work, and increases the amount of work everyone must do doing those hours. It's pretty straightforward. It's also unpleasant. So workers, not wanting to do deleterious things to themselves, hire a coordinator class to do it for them. The coordinator class becomes entrenched, gives itself perks and privileges, and voila, working-class autonomy is out the window.

The workers aren't going to “keep on [management's] case” about what needs to be done. The workers are tired and de-skilled. They don't know what's going on. They're not in position to make decisions, because they don't know the decisions being made, and they don't have the information needed to assess those decisions anyway. Pretty soon, you've got Yugo plants in Sarajevo which look just like Lada plants in Moscow which look just like Ford factories in Detroit. A visitor from Mars would be hard-pressed to tell the difference. And so would the workers.

If we're on the side of the workers, we all have to work a balanced job complex. If we don't, we're not on the side of the workers. If I told you I was for women's rights, but that I was against abortion rights, you'd be highly unlikely to believe that I was really for women's rights. Well, if you're opposed to working a balanced job complex, then as a former $11/hour ass-wiping nurse aide and now-currently unemployed member of the working class, I'm telling you that you're not for workers' rights.

Of course, the response will be, "But Eric, other workers don't feel that way." Yes, they don't feel that way yet. They don't even know what parecon is yet. If unions really represented workers -- which they most certainly do not -- they'd be educating workers about parecon, and they'd be implementing it internally themselves. Yet unions, totally predictably, do neither of these things.

I wasn't alive in the 60s, but I am assuming it took a while before women realized they had rights. I am guessing there were a few farsighted women who realized that (for instance), "Wait a damn minute. We should have control over our own bodies." These few women proceeded to tell other women about these rights all women should have, but (I presume) it took a while before a critical mass of women developed who agreed with the few farsighted women who began the process.

I am speaking to you as a member of the working class telling you the same thing, but in a different context. Just as no one who does not support women's reproductive rights can truly be considered to be for women's rights, I am telling you that no one who is opposed to working a balanced job complex can truly be considered to be for workers' rights.

I also believe there is another angle from which to approach questions about parecon. Parecon is founded on four core values: equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management (one could also include efficiency as a value, though I don't personally find it necessary, and when I discuss parecon with people, I usually only mention it tangentially, and go into more detail later if the person I'm speaking to has efficiency concerns). In conversations with people, I define each of these values. I then say that two of these values (viz., solidarity and diversity) and completely non-controversial. I say that self-management is mostly non-controversial, though potentially a little so, but I don't spend much time on why, since for the people I'm talking to (usually working-class people), it's not really necessary.

Then I say that equity is the highly controversial value, since coordinators and capitalists don't care much for the idea of remuneration for effort and sacrifice only, with no remuneration for power or output (as in coordinatorist economies), or for power, output, or property (as in capitalist economies). Coordinators and capitalists hate hate hate HATE the idea of remuneration for effort and sacrifice only, which is what makes equity so controversial (though among the working-class, equity is virtually never controversial at all, but rather seemingly common sense once it's thought about for a bit).

Anyway, this other approach to parecon (which is really just following the approach of Parecon: Life After Capitalism) is to state the values, define the values, then ask the question of the critic: "Do you agree with these values?" If no, then further discussion is pointless. The critic need only be honest about his or her distaste for one or more of the values, and everyone can agree to disagree at that point and simply go home. If the critic, however, does agree with the values, then it's simply a matter of demonstrating how capitalism and coordinatorism systematically violate each of the four values (or five values, if you include efficiency), while showing that only parecon upholds and even propels all four (or five) values.

It's really not difficult at all for anyone being even remotely intellectually honest -- which coordinators pretty much never are, because they have privileges they don't want to give up and therefore must rationalize.

I had responded to Carl's comments at the February 10 event, and some of what I was going to say has already been responded to in this thread. But I can respond again to some points: What pareconish firms exist? Carl mentioned ZNet and the Amish. ZNet is correct; in a later response at the presentation, I also mentioned The NewStandard, South End Press, and two Winnipeg collectives. I described in some depth in the Q&A what happens behind-the-scenes at The NewStandard, since it was one relevant example which came readily to mind to address the particular question of how individual psychologies react in a parecon. (Short answer: Very differently from in a market context.) I don't think that the Amish may qualify, since many of the economic institutions that comprise parecon (participatory planning, balanced job complexes, remuneration per effort and sacrifice) aren't used by any Amish, as far as I know, even though the environmental impacts of Amish economic activity are far less damaging than that in other economies. Moreover, there's nothing in the parecon model that says that examples have to remain small in scale. It's just that all of the examples of implementations to date have been fairly small in scale. But that could change (and probably will have to). All of the parecon-ish economic institutions seen to light thus far operate in market contexts. Yes, that's correct. And until such time as the larger context changes in which they operate changes to a significant degree, they very likely will have to operate in a market context. Nobody who has worked with or advocated the model said otherwise. There are examples of what David Schweickart described at the presentation. Perhaps so, but I didn't raise a point that institutions along what David described weren't being formed. David didn't go into any description of these examples, as I recall, and he kept pretty much to the theoretical realm. Carl said: "I don't believe the market in goods and services can be abolished by fiat, revolutionary directive, or even gradual legal reform, so long as scarcity persists (all you would get would be black markets or firing squads or both), the question for PARECON is how do you get from here to there, apart from moral example (Albert's press) or sexual reproduction (the Amish), which move at a snail's pace, if they grow at all?" It's the hardest question of all: How do we get from markets to parecon without an instruction book from aliens from outer space? (Reminds me of a TV show I watched when I was a kid, but I digress.) I did mention the problem, but only in the most vague terms, and offered an (admittedly vague) response, but it's the best response I've heard to date. Both Robin Hahnel and Derek Wall offers the same solution. I quote here from Wall:

Strategy, whether in Kentucky or Ulan Bator, must be amphibious, half in the dirty water of the present but seeking to move on to a new, unexplored territory. Anti-capitalist alternatives should be assessed in terms of their ability to address present concerns.

Now, what does that mean as far as here-and-now details? I think it means that you can use one to achieve the other. For example, I work on issues pertaining to media, especially involving FCC rules towards media ownership. Take today, which saw strong hints of a rumored merger between the only two satellite radio networks. The FCC, oddly enough, has been reluctant to approve this particular merger, but that probably just means the bribes aren't yet big enough. But the fact that this is happening grants us an excellent teachable moment to show others who follow media issues the larger structural (read: market-motivated) issues at play, so we can answer the question raised:

All we ever hear about from the so-called free-marketeers is how competition is best for the American consumer. Then how come all they actually do is cut off competition with merger after merger?

Another idea: Why not use more "popular" form of media -- a novel, a song, a movie, a TV show, a game -- to use to spread the word about the model. As you can tell, I'm increasingly anxious and hoping to work on this soon. But there are teachable opportunties just ripe for the plucking in a host of realms -- labor rights, the environment, foreign policy, economic equity along gender issues -- the list can go on. While ZNet is a great incubator for these ideas, I think that they shouldn't stay here. That was the whole point of the debate we had at OUL last weekend, and why I count it as a resounding success. My hope is that, given enough examples and enough awareness of the model and related issues, at some point a point of critical mass can be achieved which can then REALLY changing things far more quickly than in the past. But we have to start somewhere.

It's probably true that the more people know about economics, the more they'll side with Schweickart, since the more they know about economics, the greater the chances that they're better (formally) educated. The more educated they are, the more likely they are to be more deeply indoctrinated, as well as the more privileged employment circumstances they're likely to hold, i.e., the more money they're likely to make, and the more cushy work circumstances they're likely to have. They're more likely to be coordinators.

The only way I can imagine someone not seeing the existence of the coordinator class is by being a member of that class. Anyone who has, for example, worked as nurse aide knows that being a nurse aide and being a doctor are two different things, even if neither owns the hospital. It is true that there are coordination tasks in a workplace; any workplace is a just set of tasks, and some of those tasks are coordination tasks. The point is that in capitalist economies (as well as in coordinatorist economies like the former USSR), there is a permanently entrenched group of people who monopolize these coordination tasks -- people like doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers -- people who have a high degree of control over their own work circumstances, as well as the circumstances of many other people, not to mention above average remuneration for their efforts.

Regarding currently-existing pareconish organizations, there are several I am aware of: Z (Woods Hole, MA), South End Press (Boston, MA), The NewStandard (Syracuse, NY), Cafe Mondragon (Winnipeg, MB), G7 Welcoming Committee Records (Winnipeg, MB), and Reverse Garbage (Brisbaine, Australia). In all these workplaces, which are all admittedly small, and all lacking in resources, members work a balanced job complex and are remunerated for effort and sacrifice, not power or output -- as opposed to workplaces in either the current United States, or the former USSR, which were virtually indistinguishable.

I'm no expert on Venezuela. However, in the long run, there is a great danger in the Venezuelan experiment. If structural class differences are not addressed -- then eventually, the movement will break down due to its own internal contradictions. At some point, you're either empowering the working-class (meaning the people who currently swing the mops, answer the phones, wipe the patients' dirty asses, clean the toilets, empty the trash cans, mine the coal, drive the buses, or whatever), or you're empowering someone else -- be it the owners or the coordinators.

In the former USSR, there were no capitalists. Yet the USSR was hardly a worker paradise; it was not a worker-run society. So who ran it? The coordinator class. If you don't have "coordinator class" in your conceptual toolbox, you can't properly analyze Soviet economices. And if you don't have that class in your mind as you build a movement, you're either going to build a movement that leads to coordinatorist rule (as in Russia), or you're not going to build a movement at all (as in the U.S., now) -- at least not an effective one, if your goals are, say, stopping global warming, ending racism and sexism, or winning new economic, kinship, cultural, and political institutions. However, if your goal is to win sops from power, then recognizing the class is not necessary.

On behalf of pareconists everywhere, thank you for the hard word you put in for this debate. As many people know, Gandhi said, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." I am long past ready to move to the fighting stage when it comes to participatory economics.