From: "Michael Albert" <>
It seems this message came through -- perhaps it was the last for direct delivery. I haven't gotten a package of accumlating messages, as yet.
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CB: I'll send this next response directly to you and to the list
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When you ask about parecon you are asking about an economic vision -- and you could be asking about contrasting them to what have been marxist economic visions.
You could ask about the surrounding economic ideas, concepts, etc., and contrasting them to marxist economics.
And it turns out that, yes, I have -- like most people on the left -- a broader conceptual framework, theory if you want, addressing society and history, not only economics, and the question could be about comparing that...
And then there is strategy.
This is much too much...but I will respond with just a bit on each...even at risk of confusion...
Marxist economic visions have been centrally planned socialism and market socialism -- those are the only ones, in some varients, that are seroiusly institutionally specified. Parecon is very different from both.
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CB: Well, Parecon is planned, and so is planned socialism. I don't think Marx had a vision of _market_ socialism. So, in that regard Marx's vision and parecon are similar not different. Marx's notion of planning was holistic.
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They have state or public ownership, corporate divisions of labor, remuneration for power (and to a degree output), hierarchical decision making, class division and (coordinator) class rule, and for allocation either markets or central planning. Parecon has, instead, in essence universal or no ownership of productive assets (it amounts to the same
thing) , balanced job complexes and councils, remuneration for effort and sacrifice, self management, classlessness, and participatory planning.
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CB: Surely, Marx's vision was of a _classless_ society, abolition of private property or private ownership of the basic means of production ( i.e. productive assets) , the whithering away of the state.
What do you mean by "remuneration for power " ? That does sound like something Marx envisioned for the communism.
By the way , what is your attitude toward the state ?
For Marx there is socialism as the first phase of communism. Communism , in Marx's vision, is quite pareconish, as you describe it.
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I can't be so succinct about surrounding economic ideas -- suffice it to say I think pareconish economic frameworks are primarily far more attentive to the non material (social relations) inputs and outputs of production and consumption,
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CB: More attentive than Marx ? How so ?
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and have a different conceptualization of the social relations of economic institutions and their implications, particularly for the motivations and thus interests of actors -- leading to a three key class instead of a two key class view of economic class differentiation within capitalism. (This also leads to a different view of post capitalist economies that have existed, or that we might seek).And Pareconish conceptualizations reject marxist notions about falling rates of profit, etc. etc.
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CB: How do you define "class" ?
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Regarding still broader concpetualizations...mostly, mine attribute far more centrality to domains other than economy than most marxists...and reject much of marxism's conceptualization of society and history in terms of such things as forces and relations of production, etc., having a quite different view of how societies cohere as stable and alter within their broad defining relations and, also, are transformed in defining (revolutionary) ways.
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CB: What are the other domains that you attribute more centrality to than Marx ?
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There is lots published, and online too, about all of this, for anyone interested.
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CB: What are the s/cites ?
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