by MICHAEL ALBERT
Finding Unity?
Anarchism says, in all life’s dimensions, reduce the exercise of power of one person or group over other people or groups to a minimum. Reject all hierarchies of power and reward whether are based on position in the economy, culture, polity, or kinship. Favor free association of informed actors exercising a self managing say over decisions that affect them.
We ask, what is the broad view of this type of liberatory, anti authoritarian, free association anarchism toward participatory economics? In reply some liberatory anarchists aggressively favor parecon as a vision. They pal around with parecon. And we pareconists are happy about that. However, other liberatory anarchists see in parecon a quicksand snake pit of deadly deceit. They reject and even revile parecon. And we pareconists are sad about that.
The anarchist parecon proponents don’t understand the anarchist parecon critics’ funeral dirges. The anarchist parecon critics, in return, don’t understand the anarchist proponents’ advocacy. The critics reason that if parecon was buried, surely no one should pal around with it. The advocates reason, if parecon was buried, shouldn’t a public autopsy have sealed the deal?
I ask, can we all reason further about these matters, and perhaps wind up on one side or the other of this question?
The institutions that parecon includes on grounds that are necessary for a fulfilling, free, and informed, self managing association of workers and consumers, are workers and consumers self managing councils, remuneration for duration, intensity, and onerousness of work, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning.
If we all think through those parecon institutions and decide parecon is a quicksand snake pit of deadly deceit, it will be due to snakelike properties of the institutions. If, instead, we all think through parecon institutions and decide parecon is a worthy and viable anarchist economy, it will be due to the liberating properties of the institutions. So which view is correct?
Immediately below I list anarchist criticisms I have often heard leveled at parecon. If you know any more, please add them, by all means, in comments you append to this essay. Then, with the list in hand, part two, next week, will address all the initial and the added concerns and hopefully kick off a discussion. Perhaps it will even lead to resolution.
Anarchism’s Diverse Criticisms of Parecon
All Vision Is Problematic and Authoritarian
1. People do not possess the knowledge or intelligence to predict the future with much confidence. Proposing visionary blueprints exceeds what we can know. It saddles us with likely wrong commitments, on the one hand, and usurps the rights of people in the future to decide their own lives, on the other hand. Blueprinting tomorrow will make serious errors and even worse, it is authoritarian toward our successors. Parecon is too detailed.
2. Vision distracts us from the present. It at least wanders into utopian abstraction and at worst slip slides into sectarianism that curtails thought and creativity. We do not need a utopia. We need to feel the new world in our daily acts and to create it in practice and action, and above all through experiment. Parecon, however, is offered from above, emphasizing logic, but with little respect for organic processes and on-going struggles and campaigns. Parecon violates spontaneity.
3. Vision irresponsibly expects working people to sacrifice time and energy they can apply to surviving the hostile present in pursuit of something they have never experienced at best available only in the future. There are no convincing working examples of Parecon. Parecon neglects prefiguration.
Vision from Pareconists Is Problematic
4. How can anyone possibly think a vision first offered by two American white guys deserves the slightest attention. They write as if they have invented parecon but as with all insight it was instead a product of a synthesis of many decades, if not centuries, of anti authoritarian struggle. Parecon violates our understanding of the source of wisdom in race, gender, and class ways. Parecon is elitist.
Z Communication for more