Re: Participatory Economics

[andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sure, I don't mind. Hahnel has a long criticism of a
longer statement of the views posted here years ago --
which he got second hand, and didn't forward to me,
just posted himself. You could probably find it
somewhere. jks

--- troy cochrane <troyc001@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Andie,
> Thanks for your response. May I forward this to
> Michael Albert? He encourages criticisms of parecon
> and I think this one is more well thought out than
> most.
>
> Thanks,
> Troy
>
> andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> Sigh. I probably should not get involved in this,
> but
> here goes. I agree with Louis on very little, but
> from
> my opposite (to his) perspective, I agree with his
> dismissal of parecon. I agree with you, Troy, and
> disagree with Louis (and Marx) that up to a point,
> it
> is valuable to develop alternative models of
> economic
> organization -- I mean valuable as an organizing
> tool,
> as a way of answering the practical question that
> arises in real organizing, What have you Got that's
> Better?
>
> But it is important to pitch the resposne at the
> right
> level of generality, and to bear in mind the things
> that Louis emphasizes, about how any alternative
> will
> arise in response to circumstances we cannot now
> imagine, and will be changed in its realization in
> response to the needs of the struggle. Another way
> to
> put it is to use a legal analogy: we want the sketch
> of a constitution, not a code of regulations. It
> would
> belp to be able to say, Yes, we have thought about
> what might be worth fighting for,a nd here is how me
> can do better and in a broad brush way avoid the
> mistakes of the past, bearing in mind that any
> actual
> alternatives taht comes about will certainly not
> look
> like what we can now conceive.
>
> Parecon could have been like this, but Albert and
> Hahnel had to make it a complete account of how in
> detail to reorganize the whole od social life. As
> such, their vision resembles that of Utoptian
> Socialisst whom Marx properly scorned. In
> particular,
> Robert Owen comesto mind -- he used to design the
> physical layout of his cooperatives, describe the
> principles of work-sharing, and so forth. This is
> silly, tedious, and pointless. It's not the job of
> utopian speculation to solve all the problems of
> social life ahead of time.
>
> The task of of modeling alternatives is rather to
> show
> that at a fairly abstract level a better alternative
> is possible. David Schweickart's Against Capitalism,
> and his more recent, Beyond Capitalism, which
> present
> market socialist models, are good illustrations of
> the
> right level of generality -- enough detail to answer
> the main question, but not so much as to get into
> the
> territory of science fiction.
>
> I will add two further points. One, which will be as
> poorly received here as it always is, is that on
> their
> own terms, A&H fail to develop a credible
> alternative
> because their parecon does not have a plausible
> answer
> to the Hayek-Mises "calculation problem" for a
> nonmarket economy -- namely, the problem that such a
> system must be catastrophically wasteful an
> inefficient because it demands that the planners
> know
> too much and be able to effectively implement theirt
> plans, which does not seem realistic to me in a
> complex modern economy.
>
> The second is that, even if A&H had such an
> alternative, their proposal does not strike me as
> desirable because it would involve far too much of
> an
> imposition on people's time, both in terms of
> involvement in planning, and in terms of
> micromanaging
> their working activity -- I mean here the "balanced
> job complexes," which strike me as both nightmareish
> and impractical. In addition, the proposal is
> undesirable because it does not respect the privacy
> of
> people's choices -- it improperly politicizes all
> preferences.
>

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