> But, of course, unions exist as a defensive mechanism
> to protect workers from capital, so presumably, we wouldn't need them
> per se in a fully participatory society.
But the problem is, ParEcon assumes what needed to be proved in the first place -- that if we all were nice to one another and looked out for one another, things would be fully participatory. But you don't organize unions by telling people, "Unions are only a limited tool and can't really change anything and will disappear someday like dinosaurs, but you should really help out and join anyway". I respect ParEcon's attempt to make economic democracy a real issue, that's cool and all, but it's not really linked to what Marx called the "ruthless critique of what exists", that is, an analysis of what makes global capitalism tick.
> >So if my salary is currently $9000 a year, and I want $18000 worth of
> >goods next year, how would the system handle this? *Everyone* is going to
> >want a bigger piece of the pie, right? (Including -- and especially --
> >firms). ...
>
> Then, since you are judged to have put out an effort worth $9000 by
> your peers, unless you can give a good argument why you should get
> more, you'll be $9,000 short of your dreams.
Again, this begs the question of how every single person is supposed to judge every single other person's effort, and how all those decisions feed back into production. It might work for very small institutions or collectives of highly-motivated people (like the folks who came up with Linux, praised be their usernames!). But the global end of the analysis -- i.e. the harsh realities of global accumulation, class struggle, and monster multinationals ("Corporasaurus Rex") rampaging up and down the planet -- gets left out. Participation is not enough; we also need to imagine and innovate a new political *content* for these democratic forms. And I'll be the first to admit that I do not have all the answers or any prefab agendas, but the question needs to be asked.
-- Dennis