> Capital rules because those with power are pretty good at keeping it.
And *why* are they pretty good at this? How precisely does this power-structure operate? Robin and Hahnel assume that by setting up a non-market sphere -- the sphere of direct input, participatory politics etc. -- the laws of the market will be repealed. But this misses something fundamental about capitalism: its dynamism. Yesterday's power-elite was GM and US Steel -- and they've done a horrible job of maintaining their power, haven't they? Instead, new powers have arisen (high tech, electronics etc.) to replace them. Ultimately, capital is not about power, it's about accumulation -- the hegemony of the commodity form.
> 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.
Where are those expositions? Thinking through the world-market is damn difficult, but it's not hopeless and it's not impossible. Marx did it for the 19th century; folks like Mandel, Adorno and Sartre did a great job for the 20th century. But to assume that we know what we want and that all that matters is to go about getting it just won't cut the mustard. The means and the ends both need to be critiqued, thought through, and put to the test of praxis.
-- Dennis