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*Post-capitalist capitalism* *Michael Albert: Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Verso, �9.*

*Post-capitalist capitalism*

*Michael Albert: Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Verso, �9.*

Participatory economics, or parecon for short, is a vision of life after
capitalism favoured by many in the anti-capitalist movement. The author of
this particular vision helped to establish Z Magazine and its web site Zmag
(zmag.org), including its subsidiary page devoted to parecon (
zmag.org/parecon), which debates the issues raised by this book.

Parecon opposes �corporate globalisation� and argues for its replacement by
�equity, solidarity, diversity and self-management.� For Albert, capitalism
means �private ownership of the means of production, market allocation, and
corporate divisions of labour.� Life after capitalism is said to combine
�social ownership, participatory planning allocation, council structure,
balanced job complexes, remuneration for effort and sacrifice, and
participatory self-management with no class differentiation.� The council
structure involves workplaces, neighbourhoods, and �facilitation boards�
which co-ordinate planning.

So-called �market socialism� is rejected because the market and class
differentials would remain, as would buyers and sellers of labour power
(capacity to work). In Albert's account, because class differentiation
disappears in parecon, �you cannot choose to hire wage slaves nor to sell
yourself as a wage slave.� Parecon permits workers to assess their own pay
and conditions in their decision-making by inputting their preferences via
councils. It apportions income in accord with effort and �does not force or
even permit people to try to maximise profits, surplus, or even revenues.�

Notice however that Albert is specifically talking about prohibiting profit
maximisation, not profits as such. Profits are acceptable; �excessive�
profits are not. In the procedure envisaged, individuals and councils submit
proposals for their own activities, receive new information including new
indicative prices, and submit revised proposals until they reach a point of
agreement. This process is open-ended and in Albert's book a hypothetical
example is discussed which reaches a seventh planning cycle, or as Albert
calls it �planning iteration.� In reviews of this book much has been made of
the potential for bureaucracy in this procedure, but a more telling
criticism would be its unquestioning acceptance of the profit system. Wages
cannot rise to the point which prevent profits being made; and a fall in
profits will put a downward pressure on wages. This is called the class
struggle.

�Parecon is basically an anarchistic economic vision�, admits Albert, and it
shows. Like many on the left, the difference between capitalism and
post-capitalism presented here is essentially political, not economic. As
indicated by the title, the crucial factor is participatory planning. The
capitalist economy would remain substantially the same in parecon: the
accumulation of capital out of profits produced by the unpaid labour of the
working class.

LEW

-- 

Marcos

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