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Why Parecon?
Posted by Chris on 09/16/07 (Commentary, Links)
As G7 has long been among the handful who have made (colossally modest) contributions to “enriching and enlarging the pursuit” of Participatory Economics (Parecon), it seems only fitting to acknowledge Michael Albert’s staggeringly sober and often hilarious reflections on his relentless decade-and-a-half advocacy of a proposal to reorganize society.
Parecon (still) makes sense (to me).
Check it out here.
8 fragments of dialogue thus far ...
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Comment by Jon UK on September 17th, 2007 at 3:51 pm:
I’ve got a copy of Life After Capitalism (PARECON). I found it really hard to read, man. I couldn’t help but contradict it here and there, but it was a good book. I think I’ll have to re-read it as I’m definately at a point in my life now where I need to see if there are any actually credible systems possible and I need to think there’s hope. I mean, bottom up structures have worked and are working - that alone keeps me hopeful that not all people are fucks.
Comment by zeph on September 17th, 2007 at 6:49 pm:
I’ve been reading some of the essays and whatnot on Znet on Parecon lately and its certainly piqued my interest, so I’ll probably read a book or two on it soon enough. At the same time I’ve been reading more about Marxism and what the PLP has to say. I find myself agreeing very much with parts of both while still being skeptical at times, hopefully further reading will help me understand more clearly these alternative models. If anyone has any comments on either (or relating Marxist ideas with Parecon) I’d love to hear them.
Comment by dallas444 on September 17th, 2007 at 7:26 pm:
There was a good interview with Michael Albert in the final issue of punk planet. If you’re not that familiar with parecon, it was a pretty concise summary.
By the way, RIP Punk Planet. What a great magazine that was.
Comment by citizen stefish on September 18th, 2007 at 2:12 am:
i actually just finished parecon, and it took about 4 months. i read it in clumps mostly because i tend to get involved in 4 or 5 books at a time. it gets a little long-winded in parts, but i think it does a good job. i agree with it, but i hope he does another in-depth book like that to plug up some loose ends. there’s actually several smaller books about it, and some with a guy named robin hahnel. you might want to try those. actually i find the parecon website to be the best source, by far. i read the articles every now and then. there was one a while back relating parecon to the spanish civil war and the anarchist system. it can be referenced here:
http://www.zmag.org/...=26&ItemID=10631
also, dissidentvoice.org has some articles.
http://www.dissident...g/author/EricPatton/
completely unrelated: i bought a bike this weekend and it should be good to go later this week. i am completely *@^#ing excited about this. no more car insurance, no more gasoline. now i have to figure a way out of the federal income tax, and i will be officially done doing business with just about everyone that i have a real problem with (i stopped consuming dead animals quite a while back).
Comment by diddee on September 18th, 2007 at 10:51 am:
completely unrelated: i bought a bike this weekend and it should be good to go later this week. i am completely *@^#ing excited about this. no more car insurance, no more gasoline.
Dude! Fuckin’ A! I recently made the same move and i know EXACTLY how you feel right now! Not only is it a good move for the environment, but its a great move for the health of your own body, too!! I’ve felt so much better, physically and emotionally, since i made the move a few months ago …
Shit , i’ve been waiting for a discussion about parecon to arise for quite a while now but i can’t recall what i wanted to say or ask… hopefully i’ll recollect it soon.
Comment by DickShit on September 18th, 2007 at 3:22 pm:
Stefish: Thanks a lot for that link to the article by Dave Markland (the first one of the three); you made my day. Dave’s the shit. He actually tried explaining some of the aforementioned article to me the other day. It’s very cool to actually see the link to what he was talking about on here.
Zeph: My understanding of Communism is that it’s inherently hierarchal. In fact, I think that’s why the Commies turned their backs on the Anarchists during the Spanish Civil War: they wanted to maintain some aspect of power.
Now, completely unrelated: North America’s premiere of John Pilger’s “War on Democracy”: http://www.stopwar.c...nts/index.html#waron
“He was drunk. He was drunk on a bike.”
Comment by antistatecommie on October 15th, 2007 at 4:26 am:
Parecon is a bunch of leftist shit. And that crypto-bureaucrat Michael Albert only wants to manage capitalism in a more worker friendly fashion: as if capital could ever be worker friendly!! Parecon doest even want to ablolish wage labor for fucks sake.
For a total critique of capitalism please look into the following theory: Giles Dauve, the Situationist International, John Holloway etc.
Heres a good starting place - http://libcom.org/tagadelic/chunk/2
Comment by diddee on October 15th, 2007 at 11:44 am:
antistatecommie
Crypto-bureaucrat? Wage labor? What version of Parecon have you been reading?
You sound like a very emotionally troubled, confused, angry young person.