October 19, 2011
"organizing, an alternate cultural model": what's wrong with Parecon?
Parecon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics, http://www.zcommunications.org/znet) has a relatively detailed prescription for an alternate cultural model. Some of the ideas seem feasible and much of it seems consistent with the ideals of socialism. To all of you much more experienced than I, what is missing or mistaken in their program? (If this has been argued here before, send me there.) Thanks
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There are some interesting suggestions from parecon, but basically it's utopian in the bad sense, that is, it's idealist (ideas determine reality) and it skips over the problem of what to do about the capitalist mode of production (capitalism). In some ways, it repeats the errors of utopian socialism that Marx skewered so effectively. We cannot get from here to there (a very basic question!) by changing money forms, or eliminating corporate personhood in the US. Any such reforms, good as they might (or might not) be in some tactical sense, leave the structures of global capitalism very much intact. And the parecon program is not consonant with socialism, which requires in reality that working people assume control of the means of production and use them for human ends, not to produce surplus value to enrich the capitalist class. Marx's formulation of "from each according to his/her ability, to each according to her/his need", if one reflects on its implicit complexities, gets at the heart of what is needed in human society.
So, Parecon it seems to me recycles old (and for the most part discredited) ideas in newish clothes--but that doesn't make them consonant with socialism.
Rich, you say socialism, "requires in reality that working people assume control of the means of production".
Parecon says,
"Decision-making principle
One of the primary propositions of parecon is that all persons should have a say in each decision proportionate to the degree to which they are affected by it. This decision-making principle is often referred to as self-management...
Work in a Participatory Economy
Democratic Work Life
Workers in a Participatory Economy would make decisions about what to do in the workplace according to the above decision making principle, where workers have say in proportion to how much they are affected by a decision. Workplace decisions might be through majority vote, requiring 50% majority. Sometimes a higher percentage, such as a 2/3 majority, or 80%, or even consensus might be needed. For instance, upgrades to a plant that would require a great deal of time and effort for all workers might need greater than 50% vote, as workers would be affected adversely by the decision. Another example is when a decision might have advantages but involves some risk, such as raising a heavy beam while building a bridge that might endanger some workers, but will make the bridge be built faster. Such a decision would seem to require consensus among the affected workers, giving any one worker veto power due to the danger."
Because parecon is more detailed about how decisions would be made by workers doesn't to me seem to deny that they will make the decisions.
As for idealism and not providing a path to get there (relevant to your comment on ecosocialism also), it surely can also be argued that if you don't know where you are going you may never get there. Not saying how to get there is easy or that there is any consensus among very many leftists about that. There was a lengthy set of comments (25 anyway) to a blog on this topic a month or so ago.
I am not looking for a percentage of workers consensus. But essential Worker's Councils which actually did exist as Soviets for a period of time. But Worker's Control is never partial
Well, Blanco, I said "in reality" (perhaps better, materially), not "should", as Parecon writes. "Shoulds" don't do much good, except perhaps tactically or as a kind of ideological positioning (that's a wholly other discussion). The thinkers I study most (Marx & Adorno) in all their works write or imply very little about what might follow the capitalist mode of production. As Adorno puts it, when one starts describing what one thinks is utopia (what comes next, if we're lucky and plucky), one ends up merely reproducing present relations of production, or more broadly, existing social relations. We do not want to do that. William Morris, at the end of the C19, in his interesting and easily readable utopian novel "News from Nowhere" has the new socialist society come into existence out of or after a violent battle in Trafalgar Square, which the revolutionary forces win--in other words, even in that gentle book, revolutionary violence is necessary at one point to transform the capitalist mode of production into that other, humane mode. Marge Piercy's fine, truly radical utopian novel "Woman on the Edge of Time," takes up the problem in more contemporary, complex, and authentic ways.
Parecon never is concerned about how their workers actually get to the point of having democratic control. The capitalists (and their police and military forces, plus their legal system) will certainly never just say, OK, you can have all of our factories, robots, machine systems, nuclear aircraft carriers and subs, and on and on--and thus also our privilege and wealth.
That's why I flat out distrust Parecon's work. They should spend their time and apparent talents focused on the problem of getting from here (the present conjuncture) to there (working people's ownership of the means of production). We'll be working things out, transforming society, as we go, avoiding the mistakes of the recent past. Something like this, I think, is the only materialist way to achieve that better world.
Enough for now. This is a good debate to be having right now.
Rich, I confess to a predilection for utopia and distancing, witness my love of maps. Although, the paper I'm working on tries to bring maps closer to home, more specifically to places in their richness. But you are challenging me very fruitfully. So now I ask, with your extensive reading and experience, how do you see transformation happening, or how do those you read see that?
Well, Blanco, I just typed out a response to your very good question, but somehow I deleted it before posting. I seem to do that regularly. Haven't got time to write it again now, so later.
OK Blanco--I'm going to try again, just off the top of my head.
Transformation happens in the course of revolutionary struggle, and it doesn't guarantee anything (witness e.g. the revolution of 1917 and the way it ran its course). Revolutionary struggle might be either short term or long term, depending on events, political will, etc. I've recently been reading about the failed revolution in Munich, 1919 I believe, which was not a pretty picture, and ended in the executions of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg among others by the Freikorps (there's a good film about this, Polish I think, titled either Rosa or Red Rosa).
Theodor Adorno says, in his Lectures on History and Freedom (given in Frankfurt in 1964-65) that everything depends on the development of what he called "a global social subject," and I tend to agree with that. I think we see this development happening in many places in the world right now--actions by different peoples who seek the same things in their differing ways. I call what they're all aiming for "socialism." And I'd say that it is not our historical task to describe what comes after capitalism (should it be good); our task is to overcome capitalism, however that may be. Adorno writes that there will be no human race, no humanity, until we have done that, and in this he follows Marx, who says, I think truly, that actual history only begins after capitalism is overcome; what we have before that is pre-history. It will be the task of others who come after us to make the new international truly human society and we cannot determine that for them. Besides, as I argued in a former post, folks who try to define that better world now just end up reproducing existing--that is capitalist--relations of production, partly because capitalism is so damn good at commodifying everything that comes along. Counter-cultural groupings are retrograde.
Margaret Atwood recently published two really good and interesting dystopian/utopian novels that work through some of this material in fascinating ways--she's a really fine novelist, and good novels do have critical truth content, by definition. One is titled "The Year of the Flood", the other "Oryx and Crake." Her background in biology makes them extra interesting and relevant.
Well, I'm too tired to go on right now. Blanco, I think your work with maps and mapping and spaces is really interesting. Sometime I'd like to hear more. You might like some of the work of Fredric Jameson. He has a very accessible 2005 book titled "Archaeologies of the Future" which is about utopian desire and its manifestations, and a 2009 book called "Valences of the Dialectic," which also includes passages on utopian hope.
Personally, I think utopian hope is absolutely necessary to anyone who struggles for a better world, but I think we need to restrain the impulse to specify it before its time.
There was a 1986 German film about Rosa:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091869/
I've seen the Rosa film and also read Oryx and Crake. I'm still not convinced that, at least for some people involved in a struggle, if there is not a vision of what they are struggling for, if not "socialism" then the various attributes of socialism that distinguish it from capitalism, then, among other outcomes, the replacement of capitalism by a non-capitalist authoritarian system that could eventually become capitalist again (e.g., China) is as possible as other outcomes. Saying that the struggle is for a more "human society" does not necessarily help people very much who have not read Marx or Adorno or Luxemburg, etc.
Nuts. I just typed out a fairly lengthy response to Blanco's comment--and then accidentally lost it (apparently deleted) once again. Does anyone know how I can recover such work, that takes me so much time? It's very frustrating. I've tried everything I can think of.
A few years ago, just prior to the presidential elections, there was a lot of talk in unions and in progressive organizations about dreaming: we asked people to dream about a human or humane future and tell one another about their dreams. The election and all that has come after interrupted those group exercises. When a comrade and I were in Paris in this period a group had a sticker that read "Reve General" ("General Dream"), a play on "Greve General" (General Strike"). I think it's time to get back to that, at least as an organizing strategy, and run the risk of utopianism for a bit.
I'm no expert on Parecon, but I seem to remember that its origins lay with people in anarchist-communist and social democratic circles. This brings up an interesting question to me: how literally do we understand ourselves as "building the new society in the shell of the old"? Do we approach that as a matter philosophy, as a matter of functional organizing or as a matter of building structures and institutions now which prefigure a socialist economy?
I note that there is a real interest in the Mondragon coops in the CCDS. We should explore why this interest is there and think about where it's going.
For what it's worth, I never heard workers talk about coops when we were doing the "dreaming" exercises. In fact, discussion of coops seems to have fallen off the map until CCDS rediscovered the Mondragon system.
What is the practical difference between what happens in Mondragon and Parecon?
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