Its a bit like wanting to have your cake and eat it too, logically it can't be done and Parecon ties itself into complex knots trying to come up with a way to achieve the impossible.
In the end, it compromises and decides that the solution is for everyone to take turns at coercing the majority, so that no-one has the power permanently. As if that would ever work. Even if you could design a system which theoretically denied such power to anyone (and Parecon appears to fail even theoretically) then any system that preserves coercion as its foundation would inevitably be corrupted by its own internal tensions.
If you favour a classless social system, then obviously everyone living under the system has to enjoy economic freedom and security. Parecon attempts to provide economic security, but deliberately eschews economic freedom. People would not be free to personally choose how they contribute economically to society, but would be economically conscripted to industry. Albert wants to abolish the boss, but retain and even dramatically enhance) the time-clock system of clocking on and off work. Frankly, I find the notion quite unsettling, reminiscent of Edward Bellamy's dystopian "Looking Backward".
Basically, Albert fails to understand that class power and privilege are an inevitable outcome of a social system based on economic or political coercion. It is not the cause. The implications of this are two-fold.
Firstly it means you can't eliminate a "co-ordinator" or whatever you want to call it class from a system that requires such a class. Merely wishing it away, or trying to share power over others equally is just silly. People don't like having others exercise power over them and will try to get out from under it. If the only way to get out from under, is become a hammer instead of a nail, people will try to find some way to do that and some will inevitably succeed. Thus, Parecon would be doomed from the start.
However the second implication also suggest the obvious remedy to the problem. Design a system where there are no mechanisms by which it is possible to exercise power over others. Then you don't need to worry about any "co-ordinator class" misusing its power. Because its power would not be over people in any effective way. You then don't have to worry about all that sharing of "co-ordinator" roles and can let the people who like doing that sort of thing and have the capabilities, concentrate on doing what they are good at. Much more efficient too, incidentally, than insisting on people taking a turn at a job they have no aptitude for.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
At 7:16 PM -0400 7/7/07, Peter Ward wrote:
>Parecon, Michael Albert's proposal, is consistent with anarchism/
>libertarianism (as I understand the terms), but distinguished in
>quite a crucial way from marxian socialism. I think this statement,
>from a recent Znet interview gets to the heart of the matter.
>Intellectuals in the tradition of Marx what to preserve what Albert
>calls the "coordinator class". Presumably because these intellectuals
>are or hope to be part of this class, the class that gets to tell the
>working class what to do, i.e.* --
>"I don't think being attentive to the existence of the coordinator
>class distinguishes parecon from the heritage of anarchism, which, I
>think, is actually the source of the earliest ideas of this same
>sort. I do think, however, it distinguishes parecon from the heritage
>of Marxism-Leninism, because in my view, historically Marxism-
>Leninism is not being the ideology of the working class, as it
>claims, but, is instead, in practice, and even against the
>aspirations of most of its advocates, the ideology of the coordinator
>class."
>
>I was quite surprised as a student of what was self-regarded as quite
>a radical program (Film and Photography at Napier University,
>Edinburgh) just how reactionary both the staff, liberal intellectuals
>(many Marxists or sympathetic to Marxist theory), and the content of
>the articles assigned were. I think that in practice intellectuals,
>like doctors and engineers, fall on the wrong side of the fulcrum to
>be of much use with respect to truly democratic political/economic
>reforms. They may not be as privileged as the infamous capitalist,
>but they do belong to a relatively privileged class and would have to
>give that privilege up if they were sincere--at the end of the day,
>Norman Finkelstein exempted, the vast majority aren't willing to do
>that. (I think this fact goes about 90% of the way of explaining why
>academic discourse is tends to be so in incomprehensible--most of it
>is an apology for a) not taking political responsibility and b) for
>unjustified class-status. This is true especially of so called post-
>modern theory.)
>
>*I don't think that academics quite fall under the term coordinator
>class as Albert uses it; but believe the role of academics is
>analogous in relevant respects. It's true they don't usually have
>direct subordinates in the sense that a nurse is a direct subordinate
>of a doctor. But they do arrogate themselves as experts or referees
>of cultural and political issues (if they are successful, by sussing
>out what those who really have power think and desire and providing a
>philosophy to rationalize it--i.e., by acting as what Chomsky calls a
>"secular priesthood") and they do enjoy the fruits of exploited
>labor--someone else cleaned out the lecture theater before class, to
>site one of many concrete example.
>
>Peter Ward
>Contrarian
>Brooklyn, NY
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