Londons Falling

A Bureaucratic Economy

Rating: 2/5
Comments:
Parecon attempts to defend "participatory" economics. However, only a bureaucrat could love "parecon". I did not see any mention of America's Shakers who tried a religious form of participatory economics and failed. Nor did I see anything on the many socialistic communes that formed in America in the 1970's (Most failed). Nor did I see anything to explain why some of Israel's kibbutzim seem to lack the enthusiasm they had 40 and 50 years ago.

Parecon is at least one (or more) step(s) toward socialism than is the concept of Co-ops. The author suggests that no one should have any "ownwership" of any means of production. To me, this means that there is no individual ownership of anything including of my self. Everything should belong to all members of the parecon society. Unfortunately, this totally disregards very fundamental human psychology. If I have access to anything that can be used as a means of production for stuff that is "scarce", I am going to try to produce the scarcity so I can get a higher reward for my efforts than society is willing to give me for my regular, assigned, job.

There are a number of these blind spots to the realities of human psychology in the author's presentation. For example, the author does not discuss "competition".

On the other hand, the presentation is worthwhile for students of economics who wish to intellectually explore various possibilities for economics.

My overall impression is that parecon has too much potential for some alpha-dog participants to take advantage of more passive participants and much too much bureaucracy necessary to achieve parecon in an entire nation. I think there is a serious lack of individual freedom or liberty in the author's notion of a parecon. I think it would be more worthwhile and more realistic to study how tribal economies work in the various American Indian nations.

best solution offered

Rating: 5/5
Comments:
this book is well written, well researched and well thought out.

the argument against capitalism, market socialism and centrally planned economies is firmly established by this book.

this is a bible for anyone who wants to democratize the economy

An excellent contribution to left political economic thought

Rating: 4/5
Comments:
In this comprehensive, well-organised argument for a meaningful post-capitalist political economy, Michael Albert critiques both free-market capitalism as well as its existing (or failed) alternatives of central-planning (the Soviet model) and market socialism (the Yugoslav model) offering a well-thought out vision of democratic planning, self management and balanced job-complexes as an antidote.
Many of Albert's core ideas are not, in themselves, new but can be traced to currents in libertarian socialist thought from as early as the late nineteenth century and systems close to parecons have managed to emerge throughout history in various contexts (though seldom have they been very long-lived for a number of reasons).
Overall, Parecon is an impressive and inspiring vision of what we could achieve if we chose to live according to a fundamentally different set of guiding values and modes of operation to those that prevail in a market system. Naturally, implementation in real life would be beset with many challenges and difficulties but having a vision of what "the good society" is brings us that much closer to achieving it.
I applaud Michael Albert's work in producing Parecon and heartily recommend it to anyone interested in questions of post-capitalist political-economy.