Capital rules because those with power are pretty good at keeping it. All sorts of devices are used from straight coercion (vicious laws, punishments) to propaganda to macroeconomic policy. Those questions are asked, by numerous authors. There is no shortage of terrific expositions of the multitudinous weapons used to keep us asunder.
> .... ParEcon seems to
>assume that politics is one thing and the economy is quite another --
>but ... ... you can't simply call for cooperative
>enterprises and Proudhonian collectives. ...
First, ParEcon assumes no such thing. Second, to treat the problem of organizing a just economy as a separate intellectual problem does not mean that later, issues of overcoming the current regime cannot be folded in to the analysis (or vice-versa) --- it does not mean that the authors believe politics is indeed separate from the economy. ParEcon is not trying to provide a blueprint for the future. It is merely trying to demonstrate that there is a *direction* that is feasible for us to follow once we *have* figured out the variety of ways that capital rules, and we *have* figured out a way to overcome it. In fact, *knowing* that there is a potential alternative path, learning about it and strengthening awareness of it could very well provide well-grounded impetus to changing the current system.
> .... Capitalism is not a coordinator
>class, a bunch of rich people, or a power-structure: it's the totality of
>all those things, a set of dynamic social relations which we can barely
>even comprehend.
I don't think it's all that complicated. The powerful exclude the non-powerful from basic things, like setting up the rules under which we live, from the macro to the micro level. The rich are the ones with the means to purchase divisions among the rest of us. They have done this from the very beginning of this country, when they, e.g., held ratification elections in Massachusetts for the new Constitution during the time of year when the roads to the cities were impassible by the farmers. They do it in numerous ways, and you can spend endless ink analyzing the endless details of it.
Finally, you seem to think that ParEcon is flawed because it does not attempt some totalizing exposition of human society. But I think such a yardstick is hopeless, and unnecessary to boot, simply because there are already, as I said, great expositions of how the rulers rule. The big question, in my mind, of how to overturn the system depends crucially on what we plan to do once we overturn it. I happen to think that the arguments A/H give *against markets* are very persuasive, even "democratic markets" or "market socialism". Thus I think that the transition away from capitalism itself is crucially conditioned by what can follow, and if what people normally assume will follow, and will maintain socialist values (i.e., market socialism), cannot indeed provide for this, then I think an alternative set of ideas is extraordinarily valuable.
Bill