> A fine critique. Parecon seems impossible in both technical and
> political terms. All that job-complex and consumption planning would
> take up so much time.
Strange, Schweickart's first critique struck me as very weak. It's like criticizing capitalism in the following way:
"... Well, then obviously you'll have to barter for the pig and the heads of lettuce with your bushel of tobacco. Or if you allow corporations, how can a large firm be possible? Maybe one CEO can deal with a company of five people, but most serious industries need large teams of people cooperating."
Plus, there's too much of the Cult of the Invisible Hand about it. In my experience, with respected books like Holden/Reed's explaining that modern pricing decisions best come at the end of inter-departmental corporate strategizing, I get the impression Schweickart has an idealized view of how a real-world economy actually operates. He actually reminds me of middle managers' efficiency arguments in favor of hierarchy. (So, when a union tries to organize, they'll swear up and down all this bureaucracy and bargaining will ruin the economy due to inefficiency, even though salespeople are great examples of "bureaucracy and bargaining.")
(Or maybe a comparison to von Mises and Hayek is more apt... [1])
In our economy, it appears managers spend most of their time in meetings, or at least a very significant amount. [2] But forgetting that, we can just spend a few minutes watching TV or surfing the net -- people talk endlessly about their productive and consumptive lives, and the industries which affect them. The fact that most of them are shut out of meaningful decisionmaking doesn't stop this.
> Really, who the fuck wants to spend all that time in meetings?
And who prefers to be barred from them? Famous GE CEO Jack Welch claimed: "Control your destiny or someone else will." That's very much in line with the Do It Yourself worldview common among anarchists.
Tayssir
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem Not that I'm familiar with their works.
[2] - http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/improbable/story/0,11109,1687547,00.html
> On Oct 19, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Michael Pugliese wrote:
>>
>> What follows is a debate between David Schweickart, author of After
>> Capitalism and SolidarityEconomy.net editor, and Michael Albert,
>> author of Parecon and founder of Z Magazine. The debate was sparked by
>> Schweickart's critique of Parecon, "Nonsense on Stilits."