[lbo-talk] Schweickart’s critique of Parecon, “Nonsense on Stilits.”

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Oct 20 09:58:41 PDT 2006


Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>
> People want to delegate decisions and get on with their lives, not
> engage in endless dickering and bickering. You could never sell
> radical economic change if it meant more work.

I'm no fan of parecon but the reasoning here is fallacious. Even now, under present conditions of advanced capitalism, "People want P" is probably false. There almost certainly as many people who do not want P or want P if and only if it is P+Q or don't want P if and only P also implies Q. And so forth.

But more importantly. You don't know, I don't know, and Albert doesn't know what people will and will not "want" under the radically changed conditions of a socialist society emerging from the chaos of capitalism in its death agonies. (And that is the only kind of capitalism that will precede any socialist society.)

Both you and Albert are claiming to have a crystal ball.


> And that balanced job
> complexes stuff sounds hopelessly complex to negotiate.

This sounds reasonable, though I tend to yawn at all "practical" recipes for the future. The very fact that they claim to be practical reveals that they are grounded in a claim of prophetic power.

Carrol



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