SolidarityEconomy.net

What follows is a debate between David Schweickart, author of After Capitalism and SolidarityEconomy.net editor, and Michael Albert, author of Parecon and founder of Z Magazine. The debate was sparked by Schweickart’s critique of Parecon, “Nonsense on Stilits.”

Critique Without Comprehension
Responding to David Schweickart Regarding Parecon
by Michael Albert; February 24, 2006

This essay replies to Schweickart: Nonsense On Stilts

Parecon Phenomenon 1: Serious Thought Or Manipulated Irrationality?

In David Schweickart’s view, my book Parecon: Life After Capitalism is not just nonsense…but nonsense on stilts. Strangely, Schweickart, though a philosopher, largely ignores the historical and social evidence and argument and particularly the ethical precepts offered on behalf of rejecting capitalism and market economies of any kind. He doesn’t question, or for that matter even address parecon’s injunction to seek economic classlessness via placing solidarity, diversity, equity, and self management at the heart of both judging and choosing economic institutions. Instead, Schweickart overwhelmingly focuses on whether participatory economics can function at all.

Schweickart asserts not only that the Verso published book is “terrible,” but, more important, that the entire economic model called participatory economics is “hopelessly, irredeemably flawed” to the point that any leftist should immediately see it is worthless. Feeling thusly, he doesn’t understand the “parecon phenomena” and he spends time wondering why growing numbers of leftists are urging its merits and trying to refine and improve its substance. I will ignore the odd idea that this growing support and involvement reflects that I am some kind of tireless Svengali who has hoodwinked not only my friends, but the many parecon advocates whom I don’t know, the international publishers, etc., and that I have even hoodwinked myself (out of unrestrained hope), all to a point of slavish fixation that is “immune to common sense or reason.” For Schweickart, we are all advocating something only a deluded fool wouldn’t quickly dismiss. It seems better, as well as less demeaning to myself and others, for me to assume that there is support, and also criticism, and that I and others rationally (rather than slavishly) advocate and are trying to improve the model, even though Schweickart thinks no one rational would do so.

In any event, Schweickart is entirely correct that parecon centrally includes “balanced job complexes” which seek to equilibrate jobs for their empowerment effects in order to eliminate a class division between what I call the coordinator class of empowered employees including managers, lawyers, engineers, etc., and more typical workers. Strangely, Schweickart never mentions this class analysis aspect of parecon, though he, like me, is a member of the class it pinpoints. Schweickart is also right, however, that parecon includes “remuneration for duration, intensity, and onerousness of work” in order to attain equitable distribution of income. And he is right, as well, that parecon includes “participatory planning” in pursuit of self managed and classless allocation that reflects workers’ and consumers’ needs. If Schweickart is correct that these three features that he focuses on are not viable and/or not worthy, then he is also correct that the overall model is flawed. Parecon does rest on these legs, which he thinks he has cut out from under it.

Balanced Job Complexes: Classless Division of Labor or Crazy Chaos?

Schweickart starts with balanced job complexes. He doesn’t question my arguments that they are necessary to avoid class division, nor does he suggest that having balanced job complexes would hurt productivity or treat people unfairly - which are concerns I deal with at length in the book. Instead, Schweickart urges that balanced job complexes are transparently and self evidently impossible to implement. In his view, moreover, this is so obvious that only the deluded (or self delusional) would think otherwise.

To make this case, Schweickart first quotes a passage in which I describe some tasks as being more empowering and others as being less empowering, employing a hypothetical ranking of 1 - 20 to explain the abstract claim. He then ridicules the idiocy of thinking that we could arrive at balanced job complexes in a large firm by showing how at his university, as an example, given the virtually innumerable tasks it encompasses, first carefully ranking every task, and then second, painstakingly combining bunches of tasks to arrive at the same mathematical average for every job we constructed, would be very nearly infinitely time consuming and confusion inspiring. He does note in passing that I made clear in the book that the numeric ranking was only to explain the underlying idea and show the conceptual possibility of jobs composed of bundles of tasks such that each job was comparable in its empowerment effects to all others - and that I did not propose this mathematical ranking description to describe a social procedure for actually arriving at such a goal, which I explicitly said it was not. Nonetheless, Schweickart treated the mathematical ranking example as a social procedure for about 20% of his long review. It was easy to ridicule taken that way, but that ridicule has no bearing on actual parecon prospects.

So how do balanced job complexes persist year to year, in a parecon? Well, as Schweickart notes, in a functioning parecon we have balanced job complexes already and so for maintenance we are only talking about changes to preserve or to realign their balance from year to year. Suppose a new technology is put in place, or some new realization about existing options regarding work arises. If the change is significant in its empowerment implications, we must then shift a few tasks in accord, in some division inside some workplace, or perhaps for a whole workplace, or even across workplaces. This is obviously not so difficult. Jobs alter all the time in any kind of economy, much more so than this. A yearly or bi-yearly session of a workers council in an industry, a workplace, or in a division, guided by reports from workers who are assigned to assess changing conditions as part of their overall responsibilities, could certainly non disruptively propose such refinements to workers councils. But this isn’t what Schweickart found fault with. Rather, he doubts the possibility of getting balance the first time around, at the outset, from what we have now. And Schweickart is quite right that that isn’t easy, which doesn’t mean, however, that it shouldn’t be done.

One way to think of this is to realize that the pre-capitalist system of artisanal craft power was unraveled by Taylorist practice, breaking down skilled (somewhat balanced) jobs into their minute tasks, in order to re-construct them on the basis of the hierarchical control requirements of a class system. If capitalism can adapt jobs to increase inequality and especially control by a few, why can’t a post capitalist economy re-combine components to make up new jobs that balance empowerment effects of work to produce social classlessness? For example, consider bus drivers and transit planning. Why couldn’t bus drivers or other transit workers have training to do transit planning as well as to drive? It really isn’t hard in industries to see steps on the road to generating balance.

Take, as Schweickart suggests, his own university, Loyola. If, we assume it is as now, but one wishes to move from that corporate structure to an array of balanced job complexes, what has to happen? Well, quite a lot. We can even make it more urgent. Take the Bolivarian University in Venezuela set up precisely to evidence new ways of organizing an educational institution. Suppose they want to eliminate internal class division. What should they, or Loyola, do?

Well, for people who have had a lifetime of rote and tedious work to begin doing more empowering work, may entail, in part, some training. So one quick and relatively straightforward innovation is to institute classes for employees, not just for students. The students and faculty can pick up some of the then unassigned labor due to gardeners, custodians, waiters, and secretaries, taking some classes. Professors, can immediately do some or all of their own phoning, Xeroxing, and so on, so their secretaries can have time to pursue other tasks. For that matter, professors can even wield a broom, not just a computer mouse or joystick.

But how does the division of labor get to be not just somewhat improved, but fully balanced? Not in a gigantic rush, that’s for sure. And not by some idiotic mechanical calculation process, that’s also for sure. Transition involves experimentation in job definition. It involves a flow of changes that give those doing only cushy and empowering work steadily more of the socially necessary but rote tasks, while giving some of their cushy and empowering labor over to those who were previously excluded. Does this entail that the custodian teaches quantum theory, right off, or even ever? No. But the custodian may well, perhaps with a little training, perhaps not even needing that, do some of the labor that deans or heads of faculty now do - or would do once the university is more libertarian about education and other functions - and perhaps in time she might also teach, in one department or another, or not.

The point is, if you look down the road some years from when serious redesign in pursuit of balanced job complexes begins, balanced job complexes can be attained and, moreover, the people who work at the new Loyola can have had enriching education in their youth - rather than about 80% being taught mostly to endure boredom and take orders, and 20% being taught productive skills and also to feel superior. In the new Loyola all who work there are equipped to participate cooperatively and equitably in balanced jobs, and a few will not dominate the rest. And the same goes for other workplaces. We don’t all do everything, of course. None of us do things beyond our capacities, naturally. We all do, however, do some activity that is empowering and some that is not, in a socially balanced mix.

In other words, if the Bolivarian University says it wants self management and equity - or a bit further in the future if Loyola does - but it keeps a division of labor in which 80% of the workforce obeys orders and follows agendas and 20% gives orders and creates agendas, then day by day, even in large and formally democratic assemblies, the 20% will dominate outcomes, and they will also aggressively reward themselves, seeing themselves as more worthy. To avoid that class division and all the alienation, subordination, and travail that goes with it, one wants to create a situation in which all the employees by virtue of their balanced work conditions - as well as sensible prior training - are comparably empowered. One does not want to create a condition in which some employees are highly empowered and others are overwhelmingly made passive. That’s the reason for balanced job complexes. Expertise is not eliminated, or reduced, but is expanded by greatly enlarging society’s interest in giving all its citizens serious educational opportunities. What is eliminated is some people monopolizing empowering tasks, while other people are made subordinate by their solely rote and repetitive labors. Without balanced job complexes, and supposing capitalists are out of the picture, it seems to me that we necessarily have coordinator class rule. With balanced job complexes, we can have classlessness. The task, if this claim is correct, is, to my eyes, not to belittle the possibility of balancing job complexes by magnifying unreal weaknesses, but to refine parecon’s logic and methods so they become ever more viable. Saying that we can’t eliminate monopolization of empowering tasks into few jobs is tantamount, I think, to saying TINA, there is no alternative - not there is no alternative to capitalism, but there is no alternative to class rule. Schweickart is right that my tendency is to work damn hard to discover ways to thwart that claim, though I don’t think that means I am delusional or irrational.

Are balanced job complexes hard to reach from the capitalist economies that we now inhabit? Of course they are. Does one reach them by some kind of mechanical process that seeks mathematical perfection over night, of for that matter, ever? Of course not. Nor have I ever suggested it, though I welcome Schweickart’s review for making me be very explicit, again. We move toward balance by making changes in a social adjustment, many steps undertaken over considerable time, first won by movements seeking reforms, but then later enacted by self managing workers’ and consumers’ councils. And we don’t fetishize some kind of abstract perfection at any point in the process, of course, but we stop adjusting when workers collectively (in each venue) feel that any further tinkering would be a waste of precious time relative to minor gains still to be had.

Once we have balanced job complexes, are they hard to maintain and adjust? No, there is no reason to think that is the case. In fact, it is instead plausible that it is far harder to continually realign jobs to keep most people subordinate and a few people empowered, roughly in a four to one ratio, despite that doing so diminishes productivity as well as being horribly unjust, than it will be to keep all jobs equitably balanced up to a socially agreed condition conducive to self managed participation, and which enhances productivity and attains classlessness. So, balanced job complexes will not only be vastly more just and humane than corporate divisions of labor (whether the latter are chosen on their own “merits” or imposed by markets or central planning or just grudgingly accepted as “unavoidable”), but, as a bonus, and contrary to Schweickart’s ridicule, balanced job complexes will also be easier to maintain.

Schweickart rightly notes that even beyond seeking balanced job complexes inside each firm, parecon requires that job complexes also be balanced across them. He points out that Loyola is “a clean, comfortable environment, with lots of stimulating intellectual activity. That’s not fair. Something needs to be done.” I think he means this to be sarcastic, but I agree with the sentiment, something does need to be done, and for two reasons.

First, if we are going to have some people doing much cleaner, more comfortable, and more stimulating labor, and other people doing more debilitating, dangerous, and rote labor, we should not pay the former more, as now, or even pay them all the same, as many progressives might suggest. To have remuneration that is equitable, we should pay the folks who endure worse conditions more to make up for the greater sacrifice involved in their pursuits. Second, even if we initially decided we would remunerate justly, a group of what I call coordinators with significantly and consistently more empowering economic conditions would tend to socially and organizationally dominate workers who were in contrast made menial and subservient by their more rote pursuits. Such a dominant class would steadily and increasingly push the economy toward their own advancement, including subverting the prior socially valid payment decision until it was literally reversed - as we see all around us and throughout history, in all market systems.

The point is, if an economy has some workplaces that are highly empowering, though with average job complexes inside, and other workplaces that are highly disempowering, again with average job complexes inside, in time we will have a class that occupies the former workplaces, doing little but empowered labor, and a class that inhabits the latter workplaces, doing little but rote labor. In this socially unbalanced situation, instead of a university’s custodians being part of the university staff so that balanced job complexes in the university incorporated a share of rote tasks - they would be employed in a custodian’s firm and would work in the university only on contract. And more, the custodian’s firm’s managers would be contracted day workers there, hired from a firm that is composed only of managers. Once again, we would have the class division between the empowered and disempowered, though now they would be officially employed in two entirely separate sectors of workplaces, though they would do their functions throughout the economy.

In other words, if we want an economy which doesn’t elevate one sector to a dominant position above the rest by virtue of unequally empowering economic roles, which is to say, if we want an economy without class rule, then we need to have a division of labor which gives everyone sufficient confidence, social skills, and habits of involvement and of decision making, of one sort or another, to participate fully and fairly in overall decision making. We don’t want a coordinator class who overwhelmingly set agendas, design conditions, administer outcomes, govern information flow, and pay themselves far more, while everyone else labors below.

I agree with Schweickart that most professors at Loyola will likely at first resist the idea of balanced job complexes, and also of remuneration for effort, exactly as Schweickart rejects them. Some will do it out of sincere conviction that these approaches can’t work or would lead to bad outcomes. For others their response will reflect their class interests narrowing their gaze, juggling their thoughts, and biasing their values.

Schweickart ridicules having balanced job complexes, saying that to fully have them “since enterprises have different job-empowerment averages,” some method would have to “move people around, allowing everyone working in a lower-than-average empowerment enterprise to work [part time] in a higher-than average empowerment firms, while compelling those in higher-than-average empowerment firms to work [part time] in lower-than-average empowerment firms.” I am tempted to say, and this kind of reply is possible over and over to Schweickart’s concerns, is this really so bad, even as Schweickart tilts it, as compared to having a corporate division of labor where 80% must be structurally compelled to obey and endure? But, in fact, parecon doesn’t have to justify itself only by virtue of how abysmal the corporate, market, alternatives are. Attaining cross firm balance not according to some mathematical perfection, but in a social manner acceptable to the population involved, really isn’t unduly complex.

There are plenty of examples in the book. Imagine, for one, a coal mine. Let’s suppose that technical innovations haven’t yet significantly improved the empowerment implications of working at the coal mine so that working there still involves doing tasks way below the social average empowerment level. What happens?

Well, you can’t work in the coal mine full time. Let’s say society has a thirty hour week, or whatever the population of worker/consumers arrives at given its desires for consumption as against its desires for leisure - which, by the way, is a self managed choice in a parecon whereas market systems compel accumulation and steadily increase workloads regardless of desires. In addition to working in the coal mine part time, you will work elsewhere, perhaps in your neighborhood, perhaps in any of a number of firms that are paired off with the coal mine, part time as well. These other pursuits will be at higher empowerment levels, allowing a cumulative average. And the same goes in reverse, if you work at Loyola, assuming it has significantly excessive empowerment effects in its balanced job complex, you can also only work there so many hours a week. You would have to fill out your work load with other tasks, less empowering, maybe in your neighborhood, or in nearby firms, etc. Of course scheduling is flexible, it isn’t as if you have to work in two places each day, or even each week, but only on average over time. Once we have balanced job complexes across firms, is there need for a change in people’s overall jobs at times? Sure, suppose in a parecon new technologies significantly raise the quality of life and empowerment effects of working at a coal mine, which presumably would be a priority not only for the miners, but for the whole population in order to most effectively raise the social average job complex across all society. In that case, the workers in the mine would face new conditions and their overall job would adapt.

What makes all this seem absurd to Schweickart, assuming it is not class blinders, is his thinking that balancing jobs involves some kind of precise mathematical equilibration - despite what I tried to convey in the book. Once that characterization is removed, however, and once one sees past his cataloging vast numbers of tasks, etc., there is really nothing so complex or daunting about maintaining balanced job complexes, even across firms. It will be, I would wager, far simpler for pareconish agencies to help people find a pair of workplaces with an over all total balanced job complex, than for laborers in market economies to find two or three jobs of any kind, however degrading, in an environment of competition and greed, working incredibly long hours at only onerous tasks and for exploitative wages in order to attain incomes only a fraction of the payment that managers and other coordinator class members get for doing way less actual labor. Similarily, combining tasks into jobs equitably, for self management, is no harder - though far more antithetical to human needs - than combining tasks inequitably, for hierarchical control. Schweickart doesn’t see this only because the Taylorist hierarchicalization process is long past, and the pareconist de-hierarchicalization process is still in our future.

So, yes, Schweickart is correct that it is difficult to arrive at balanced job complexes for the first time in a complex economy. Of course it is. But maintenance of balanced job complexes becomes far less difficult after attaining balance, though still, not trivial, to be sure. But what’s the alternative? Class division? Class rule? Not to mention the tremendous and ongoing difficulty of enforcing unjust relations and coercing obedience and output from wage slaves forced into horribly unbalanced job complexes?

I therefore think arriving at balanced job complexes and then maintaining them is worth some trouble, both to avoid class rule, and, put more positively, to attain self management. This is my deluded commitment. The book, Parecon, and many other writings as well, give far more evidence and supporting argument, of course, then I can provide in this reply, regarding possibility as well as purpose - the last of which Schweickart completely ignores. But, to use an ironic phrase, the bottom line is, once balanced job complexes are established, it will be much easier, less burdensome, and less of a drain on output, to modestly refine jobs every year to account for changes in empowerment effects, then it is to enforce and maintain hierarchical job structures that impose servitude on most laborers so that a minority can alone enjoy “cleaner, more comfortable, more stimulating” and especially more empowering circumstances.

Parecon’s Remuneration: Equitable Motivation Or Incentive Nightmare?

Moving on to remuneration for labor, the problem Schweickart raises owes primarily to confusion, I suspect, though others who earn relatively high incomes for doing very cushy work will likely have class-rooted problems with policies seeking the new remuneration norm. Schweickart, at any rate, didn’t accurately understand parecon’s remuneration method. He understood that it says that workers should get income for their effort and sacrifice, the ethics of which he ignored, but he missed that the labor has to be socially useful.

The parecon norm is that you get more income for more duration, more intensity, or more onerousness of your work, or you get less income for the opposite, but that this holds only if the work you do, for the duration you do it, is socially useful. If it isn’t socially useful, which means if it isn’t sufficiently effective, then the work isn’t remunerated. This means I can’t furiously dig holes in my backyard and furiously fill them, and get good pay for doing so. It produces nothing of value. It also means that I can’t be remunerated as an artist, baseball player, surgeon, airplane pilot, translator, or countless other things that I simply couldn’t do well enough for my labors to be deemed socially useful. The hours expended don’t generate sufficient value to be deemed well spent, or socially useful. I can’t work long and hard doing something that has no value, or doing something that has insufficient value per hour due to my ineffectiveness when I am doing it, and expect to be paid fully for it. There is a subtlety here that Schweickart missed, though the point is made often in the book. Without this confusion, I think we will see that Schweickart’s concerns about feasibility disappear.

To understand the subtle point, suppose I work at some firm in a parecon. My firm has to provide outputs to society commensurate to its labor and technical assets, inputs, and time spent, if all its effort is to be judged socially useful. If my firm doesn’t do that, the overall remuneration for my firm’s employees goes down because not all its labor was socially useful. Suppose my firm’s employees all together worked a whole lot, a total of a hundred thousand hours in a month, but that it didn’t generate outputs commensurate to that work level and the inputs we used, our technological capacity, etc., all functioning at average intensity. Total remuneration available for our workforce would be reduced in accord - because some of the labor we did was socially useless or was carried out at low intensity relative to average. Note, we don’t ever have a pool of income to share matching the value of our output, but we do have a pool of income to share that rises or falls relative to average-per-worker-hour depending on our effectiveness at generating output compared to the average for our industry.

Schweickart’s concerns about parecon’s remuneration are that the method of determining how much income each worker should get will lead to the workplace not performing up to capacity. But, he fails to realize that workers do indeed pay a price when their firm under produces. Total income goes down and some members of the firm must as a result earn less, or if all are to earn the same, then all on average must earn less.

So here is the actual situation in parecon, at least as I perceive it so far in the model’s development. Each workforce gets its income from a pool of payment that its firm’s output warrants. For a given workplace, if some workers have worked harder, they should get more than those who preferred to work less hard, or who just did so. The same goes for working longer or less long and likewise if there is a differential in quality of work time. So if our firm engages in job rating inflation, with assessors giving everyone high ratings, it accomplishes nothing. They don’t all get more by saying that they all worked more if they in fact didn’t more. The pool of payment doesn’t go up by workers mislabeling their effort. If the workers don’t accurately evidence the relative differences among themselves in work time, intensity, or onerousness, they don’t get more or get less than one another, but they all get the same. The sum total of their allotment isn’t under control of their assessments, just its relative apportionment. The sum total allotment depends on how long they in fact work, how hard, and how onerous the conditions in their industry are, but also on how effectively they work in that their work must be socially useful.

It is true that I believe different workplaces will adopt different approaches to attending to differentials in effort and sacrifice. Some workplaces will likely feel that there isn’t that much difference likely to exist, over a year, with balanced job complexes, and it isn’t worth the time and hassle of trying to discern tiny variations from month to month, given that they will largely average out anyhow. These workplaces will have only a few categories - perhaps average, above average, and below average - and not much fine specificity. Other workplaces might have more highly refined categories, and therefore greater numbers of categories, getting into percentage differences. Even in the workplaces where workers prefer to attend closely to effort differences, suppose someone works less but has a good personal excuse for it. Nothing prevents the workers council from awarding full income, like to others, if it wishes. It means everyone helps out with a little bit of their rightful income, because someone had family problems, or whatever. A parecon could also have means for the workplace to make a case for increasing its allotment, due to legitimate explanations of low output. Different parecons, like different firms inside a parecon, might have different policies in countless features. What is similar among parecons is the defining inclusion of workers’ and consumers self managing councils, remuneration for effort and sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning, not the detailed optional features of each, much less of other aspects.

Schweickart hears parecon saying “first of all, you are evaluated on the basis of effort, not output, and secondly, you are evaluated by your peers, not by a boss.” The latter part of this is true. The former part has the subtlety that Schweickart missed, however. You are remunerated for effort, yes, but output per asset determines the total income that is available for dispersal among the whole workforce, not only in the economy, but for each workplace as well.

Schweickart notes that for workers to monitor effort by whatever means they might choose is fine if “a) they are motivated to do so, and b) the evaluation criteria can be readily applied.” He thinks neither is the case in a parecon. He says if he had as part of his responsibility assessing effort ratings, he would not be conscientious in doing so. “If I give my peers good ratings, they will be happy. If I give them bad ratings, they will be unhappy. There is nothing to gained for myself or my co-workers by my being conscientious.” But this is false. And it isn’t just that I think Schweickart is wrong in his self assessment because I think his morality would prevent his lying, though that shouldn’t be ignored in an equitable environment like a parecon workplace where class interests are a thing of the past. Additionally, I think Schweickart would himself not be doing socially valued labor if he dogged his task by giving everyone identical inflated ratings, rather than trying to make accurate assessments at whatever degree of refinement his workplace decided they wanted. But more, if he, or really the relevant committee or work team or whatever, overseen by the council, gives high ratings to some workers, then those workers will get more of the total income available for members of the firm, and other workers in the firm will get less. He would get less, too. If he gives high ratings to everyone, however, it has no impact, unless it is true. If it is false, the output of the plant will be commensurate only to an average level of effort per worker, or perhaps even to a low effort rating for everyone. And that’s what will determine the pot of income that will be dispersed. That everyone has the same rating, high or not, means everyone will get an equal share of that reduced amount. Messing with ratings does not increase the total income for all workers in the firm, nor even diminish it, and it disrupts a true dispersal in accord with actual effort to the disadvantage of those putting forth more effort and to the advantage of those putting forth less. I don’t know how Schweickart missed all this, but it does render his concerns that people will have no reason to be conscientious moot.

Schweickart’s next concern is, if he were among those a part of whose job was assessing effort ratings, “even if I wanted to be conscientious, could I be?” He says, “in Parecon one is evaluated according to effort, not output.” But again, this is false. In parecon you are remunerated for effort, not for output, correct. But you most certainly can be, if it is revealing, evaluated for output. If my output is low or faulty, I am either not exerting or I am doing so poorly - which may well mean that part of my exertion is not socially useful. I don’t know how Schweickart missed this element of the model either, since it is enunciated repeatedly in the book, as here.

Schweickart says, “if you make a lot of mistakes in your clerical task, how can our committee determine whether you are working hard, but are just not good at the task, or are simply not paying attention?” Actually, it turns out that in his terms, regarding income in the moment, it doesn’t matter. Either way, if the workplace has chosen to distinguish among workers based on tight assessments, your income will be lower, because whether it is from being inattentive or it is from being sloppy or incompetent, not all your work is socially useful and if the workplace wants to account each person’s relative income closely, that will come into play. The solution, if you are to get your income back up, will be for you to do other tasks that you can do sufficiently well to be socially useful per hour, or to work more effectively at those you are doing. Actually, I doubt any workplace would dock pay for this kind of failing, supposing it was honest and not shirking, but rather just reassign jobs. But that’s up to the workers council. Schweickart says, “and what if a low rated worker disagrees with his evaluation? What do we do?”, and he seems to think this is a very telling point but I don’t understand why. The workplace has norms and rules. One is about remuneration. You get what you earn. You don’t like the assessment, okay, you might complain and moan, and maybe you will convince a grievance board, or whatever, but if not, you can suck it up or you might even quit and get a job elsewhere, but if you work in some firm, and the firm has collectively adopted tight procedures and graded you low, then lower pay is what you get.

Schweickart notes rightly that I claim that “Whereas differences in contribution to output will derive from differences in talent, training, job assignment, tools, luck and effort, . . . only effort merits compensation” where effort has been defined as duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor. He goes on to say that I seem “not to realize that separating effort from output renders the evaluation committee’s task impossible.” He is however himself not realizing that separating remuneration from output, which parecon does, in no way implies separating effort from output, which parecon does not do. Of course, effort generates output, and less output often reveals less effort or socially inadequate effort.

I have to say, Schweickart would be right, if a bit uncivil, to say that I had been ignorant or unrealistic or even, I suppose, irrational, if I had ignored all this. But I didn’t ignore it. So now one wonders, why didn’t Schweickart see that I didn’t, or if he did see it, why didn’t he refer to it? Maybe it wasn’t written well, I don’t know, but if he didn’t see this kind of argument, why didn’t the growing support for parecon, and his claimed respect for me, for that matter, cause him to look a little harder, instead of rushing to wrong judgment? Maybe he was too intent on finding flaw?

Schweickart deduces that “It should be clear that…evaluators will tend to give everyone the same evaluation–above average, if possible, average if there are higher-order constraints against Parecon-Wobegon. Monitors have no good way of measuring effort, and little reason to be strict.” In fact, however, monitors can measure effort by assessing output, as Schweickart would have them do, as well as by simply seeing what their co-workers are up to, etc., with far more proximity than anyone has in a corporate or market environment. Does Schweickart really think workers familiar with conditions and jobs would have a hard time knowing whether he was shirking or intensely exerting, being able to look at collective output, and being part of creating it - unlike typical current managers or owners? Moreover, monitors have good reason to be conscientious - though not so nit picky as to waste time, nor so punitive as to overly punish well-meant but poor work. Their own income depends on conscientious labor by them, and so does everyone else’s depend on their recommendations. People can’t benefit in sum total from inflated ratings, and distorted ratings punish those who in fact put forth relatively more effort while they reward those who didn’t, an option that workers would certainly not favor, or consider a job well done by evaluators, and worth remunerating.

Schweickart says “if everyone gets the same evaluation, we are confronted with a motivational problem of the first order.” But not everyone gets the same evaluation. Schweickart doesn’t understand, to make the point again and make sure it is perfectly clear, that the income to be dispersed to a parecon firm’s workforce depends on the firm’s overall productivity. If it is average for the assets the firm has, there is a total income to disperse internally that is the social average per worker per hour. If the firm’s output is above average, then there is some more per worker per hour, or if it is below average, there is some less. If I slack off relative to others, then the total pot available to the firm drops. If I get graded as average even though I was slacking off, I am getting somewhat over paid, and everyone else is losing a little as a result. If we all say we worked at the same level of effort, and we all slack off, we all get the same amount, but below the social average. We get less, in accord with the reduction in plant output relative to its assets. Similarly, if some slack off, some work extra hard, and some work average, if they are graded that way they get an accurate share of the firm’s total pot, if they are graded too high or too low, then the shares diverge from accuracy, but the pot is unchanged. Is any of this perfectly accurate, matching exactly what some omniscient being would tell us was the precisely correct effort ratings for every worker, like some kind of perfect engineering joint, down to the fifth decimal point? Of course not, not nearly. It is a social process. But it is a self managed one, socially agreed to, collectively undertaken, and with economically appropriate incentives and ethically sound income attributes.

Schweickart rightly notes that each individual worker has an incentive to work less hard or less long… so as to endure “less stress, more time to be sociable with one’s workmates,” etc. He thinks that slacking off will have no income effect on the worker, or on fellow workers, however, so everyone will automatically do it. But once again, this is simply incorrect. If worker/consumers want to work less, that’s fine, it is a plausible social choice. I think a parecon’s workforce will indeed have that inclination relative to a market economy because markets force long duration high intensity work beyond the outputs anyone actually wants, which a parecon doesn’t. So the work week might well drop, say to thirty hours, rather than climbing, as in markets, to whatever humans can bear regardless of their preferences. But while one is working in a parecon, for whatever duration the work week is, to work sloppily, lazily, or otherwise unproductively, will reduce output and reduce total income for the plant, which will either come from the pay of the slack worker, or from the pay of all workers if inaccurate ratings hide the differential. In fact, far more so than market economies, parecon provides workers an appropriate incentive for enduring stress, time away from leisure and sociability, and so on, rather than forcing excessive work on everyone by punishing anything less than that with market failure and unemployment. Thus, contrary to Schweickart’s fear, parecon provides sensible incentives for work and avoids providing gigantic bonuses to those with power, and harsh penalties to those lacking power.

Schweickart says hard work requires incentive, and I agree. He says moral incentives have their place (discussed carefully in the book) but material ones matter too. And I agree. That’s why parecon remunerates for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially useful work - precisely to provide motivation for the labor that Schweickart rightly thinks, without suitable motivation, we would all rather not do. And it is also why parecon doesn’t reward property, power, genetic endowment, luck, and other variables which are not only not morally deserving of reward, but which in being rewarded do not, in fact, provide useful incentive for hard and onerous labor. Perhaps Schweickart’s effort to explain why growing numbers of people are becoming interested in and even advocates of parecon, but not of market socialist models, missed an obvious possibility. Markets destroy what people who are not defending elite class interests value. Parecon, when you look a bit deeper than Schweickart did, enhances and enlarges what people not defending elite interests value.

Parecon’s Allocation: Efficient Self Management Or Logistical Frenzy?

Schweickart’s final feasibility concern is with participatory planning. He wonders, “How would you do it? How would Parecon determine what should be produced? How would it bring people’s needs and wants into alignment with what the workforce is willing and able to produce?”

I think these are good questions to ask. But next, instead of taking the model seriously, and pursuing his own questions seriously, Schweickart follows a path like that which he followed for the other two aspects addressed above. He misrepresents or misinterprets, as the case may be, just enough to be able to then ridicule, while appealing, I think, to what he believes are people’s prior prejudices that anything truly participatory would be too unwieldy or too unreal to implement. Let’s see whether this characterization is fair.

Again, there is a difference between getting going - which is difficult - and operating a parecon that is well established. This time, though, Schweickart takes issue with the latter, not the former. He notes that parecon requires that during the planning period consumers - and he should have noted consumer groups as in neighborhoods, communities, etc. - have to assess their projected incomes (based in turn on how much they will work) and propose commensurate consumption. The consumer, he notes, would have to take last year’s list of consumption and adapt it with changes both for different taste and for different income, and then submit that. (Schweickart mistakes the possibility of a neighborhood questioning a submission for Sherman tanks, or for gigantic lawn lights, or for enough liquor to open a store, for a gross personal intrusion because he fails to note that the process is anonymous, again missing what is repeatedly noted in the book.) People also provide, during planning, textual explanations for large changes in their consumption as a hedge against price indicators alone misleading either producers or consumers (another point dealt with in the book, but ignored by Schweickart who implies that it is just a needless, senseless burden, which, of course, if it was, or if it turns out to be, it could just be eliminated, the point being, parecon is a system under development, not a finished blueprint, and will be refined and adapted until it is implemented, and probably long thereafter too.)

Schweickart’s ridicule is that no one could possibly be a responsible consumer in participatory planning. “For some reason Parecon supporters don’t have a problem with having to make a list of all the things one might want to consume during the course of a year.” That’s probably because they understand and relate to the extensive discussions providing descriptions of how this might be done, indicating, for example, that it is not all items but all classes of items that must be addressed, and also because they realize consumers would already have their last year’s consumption and wouldn’t start from scratch, and because they know consumers’ choices can of course be refined and altered over time, and so on and so forth, all omitted by Schweickart.

Schweickart says, “Well, let’s see. Let’s start with a week. Roughly, what would I like to consume next week?” But in fact, this is not the way the process would work. It is him imposing a silly process and then calling it silly, just like he did regarding balancing job complexes. You don’t need to figure each week’s consumption and add it all up. And again the system doesn’t expect or need absolute precision of any kind, much less individual by individual. Schweickart suggests that he drinks three cups of coffee a day…well, if so, last year, he would have drunk a bit over a thousand cups. Does he expect a change, probably not, but maybe so. It takes a few seconds thought, most likely to massage this number. This will be true of most items all down the list, becoming false for items where he has some new inclination or expects to replace things that usually he wouldn’t buy - a new refrigerator for a broken one, and so on.

Schweickart says “I sometimes eat cereal for breakfast. That’ll require some sugar and some milk. How much sugar? How much milk? Let me think about that.” Yes, he makes it sound idiotic, but instead of this, in fact he will simply see that he did x cereal, y sugar, and z milk last year, and given his budget, and health, he will decide if he is going to change that significantly, or pretty much do the same.

Schweickart continues, “Sometimes I scramble an egg. That’ll require some salt, pepper, butter. Sometimes I have some bacon… Hmm–I’m only in the first half-hour of the day”, and this is just scare mongering, assuming one takes it seriously, though actually, if you think about it, even this ridiculous approach, was moving right along. But imagine we did things his way for shopping in markets, say once a week, or two or three times, for some people - you’d have to calculate like this over and over week after week. Add it up for the full year and it would be far more time consumed than doing even this silliness for participatory planning - and with planning, it is critical to keep in mind that you actually are proportionately impacting what is available, properly influencing prices, proportionately determining general and your own income distribution, setting your work time, and, in short, cooperatively collectively self managing, in a classless context, individual and collective social consumption, rather than merely competing to disadvantage others and to help only yourself in a context sharply limiting your possibilities of succeeding even at that.

Schweickart acknowledges that working from last year’s consumption makes things easier, but then notes: “I look at last year’s list. I see that I consumed two hundred and twelve eggs last year, eleven pounds of bacon, two pounds of salt… … Wow! This is a pretty long list! It goes on for pages and pages. It’s hard to believe I consumed all that stuff in just one year.”

Yes, and it would be interesting to know what we consume, wouldn’t it? Of course the planning aspect would not have to be nearly so detailed, for those who didn’t want to get that involved, instead focusing more on a set of categories than on all items. Interestingly, Schweickart never presents even a single reason why parecon has participatory planning. He is only concerned to make a case that it would be time consuming, as if having to take some time to control one’s life was (a) odious and (b) the only thing anyone might wish to avoid. I actually think parecon would save so much time at diverse points - shopping, escaping ads, not dealing with taxes, not having to work seventy, sixty, fifty, or even forty hours, but only thirty, not advancing profit or surplus for only a few, not having to defend class interests, or ward off oppressive assaults - that even if I was wrong and Schweickart was right and participatory planning took a whole lot more time than I anticipate, nonetheless, on balance, there would be substantial time gains. Of course, if not, Schweickart is right that I would still be for it. Not out of obsession, but because while time matters to me, so does classlessness and even in Schweickart’s tilted renditions, time lost wouldn’t come close to offset the gains from solidarity, equity, diversity, and self management, not to mention proper pricing, etc. etc.

Schweickart says, “What would I like to consume this coming year? I’ve been thinking about giving up meat, so that gives me some options. I can compare what I spent on bacon with what I might spend on . . . what? Maybe soybeans.” Actually, it is not such a dumb task, but Schweickart ignores that it is rather easy to do all this at different levels of category, if one so chooses. One can operate at the level of chicken, duck, etc., or at the level of poultry. One can operate at the level of chicken, pork, beef, etc. or at the level of meat, and likewise for all other categories. Statistically, producers can easily move from demand for whole categories to demand for components within a category, and for planning purposes each person can be priced at average rates for the overall category. Is this viable? Only trying would tell for sure, but I think it would be. Updating preferences occurs during the whole year, as well. I can’t present here everything Schweickart leaves out that both makes participatory planning itself more streamlined and less time consuming, but that also explains all the offsetting gains, not only in time spent, but in equity, solidarity, diversity, self management, and classlessness. But I have put it in the book, at least as well as I could perceive it in the evolving model.

Schweickart says, “We have a problem here. If I don’t specify what gifts I want, including such details as size, style and color, how are the producers going to know what to produce?” The answer, of course, is that they are sensible at what they do and therefore have a host of ways of knowing the proportions of people in various sizes, and favoring various colors, from among a total that wants sweaters, or socks, or what have you. And they can adapt their choices as the year progresses and so too can producers adapt their products.

My problem with Schweickart’s review is that while it is fine to raise the points he does, it is not fine, I think, to act as though the book itself didn’t both raise them and address them, as well as far more substantive matters, nor is it fine to ignore the actual reasons offered for participatory planning, as compared to having markets, say - which merely misprice all goods, often by as much as an order of magnitude, impose a rat race process and mentality, require virtually unlimited growth and thus imposes long hours despite counter desires, and impose class division. In contrast, even if Schweickart were right, participatory planning - that is, cooperatively negotiating the whole economy’s direction and content - would actually take some time and involve some thought, while eliminating all the other mentioned debits. Well, that’s true enough…but put that way, perhaps it is less off putting.

Schweickart says, “How will the producers know what kind of skirt [buyers] want or the kind of sweater I’d like to give my wife if we don’t specify these details on our consumption-preference list?” The answer is, of course, that in a parecon they don’t explicitly know, rather they do their best to provide quality items that people will like. If people don’t like some, they don’t provide more of that. And so on. Markets are somewhat like that, though in markets there is the constraint that profits have to be maximized and the workforce has to be kept subordinate. If parecon producers offer up skirts or sweaters people don’t like, despite their testing them with control groups, and so on, people won’t purchase them at distribution centers, and styles will be changed. But the bigger issue is precisely as I offered in the brief comment that Schweickart derisively quoted… “Applying all this to skirts, we should want the tastes and preferences of all workers and consumers and particularly of people who wear them and of those who produce skirts to interactively proportionately influence the length and color, as well as their number and composition, their method of production, and so on–instead of profit seeking determining the result.”

For Schweickart, this difference - between competitive profit seeking (or surplus expanding) on the one hand, and self managing consumers and producers’ desires, on the other hand - determining styles not to mention determining methods of production, work place conditions, relative values, income distribution, workday length, and collective goods provision, etc. - is inconsequential, and even silly, next to the serious issue which for him seems to be only that participatory planning would demand some part of one’s time in a different way than we are currently used to a few weeks a year. Despite valuing time so much, Schweickart nonetheless ignores time-gains during all other times of the year. Well, different strokes for different folks, I guess. And I think that, indeed, that’s what our differences stem from, different values. But, in any event, for Schweickart to suggest that it is simply impossible for people to propose consumption and for workers to propose production, and for a cooperative negotiation to arrive at proximate equality between those proposals by their steady refinement is simply scare mongering, rather than as he would put it, highlighting an obvious reality that only a self deluded person could be blind to. We are, indeed, far apart.

Schweickart says “Maybe I’m just being picky,” but actually, I don’t see it that way. His broad concerns are real and valid. The problem is, they are dealt with, at length, in the book. So why did the logic and argument of the book not register? Was it a fault of the writing, or the reading?

Schweickart says, “Maybe most people will just look at last year’s list and make only a few changes. (Of course there are 100 million households in the U.S., so even ‘a few’ will be millions, but never mind. Let’s move on.)” What is this kind of formulation supposed to convey? That he is generously skipping over a major problem? In fact, of course, changes mostly average out. This is the kind of calculation, without nearly as useful data, and with highly skewed motivations, firms employ now. Let’s assume every living unit in a parecon U.S. had some kind of ecologically sensible vehicle, say 150 million of them in all. Each year let’s say six percent need to be replaced. So 9 million people who last year bought one, this year won’t, and will have extra income for other things. Maybe a piano, or whatever. Another 9 million will now get one, which they didn’t last year, having less income for other things. So what is Schweickart’s point about it being millions? Of course it is millions. Now let’s suppose there is something important, a new technology available for transport, and instead of 9 million, 30 million want a new vehicle. Well this will certainly have large repercussions, indeed. Markets routinely screw up this kind of thing…not to mention having the prices horribly wrong in any event, mistreating the producers, not having the vehicles ecologically sound, and so on. Participatory planning would encounter no particular difficulties dealing with it.

Schweickart says, “I’ve been quoting from Albert to assure the reader that I am not making this up.” Well actually, he did very selective quoting, as anyone must, but, okay, the reader can decide whether I and others advocating parecon are irrationally out of touch with reality, on Schweickart’s word that this is so, or can investigate for themselves. I hope they will do the latter. The issues seem more than important enough. Class division and class rule - or not.

The Parecon Phenomenon 2: Wise Option or Delusional Silliness?

When someone says “I am not caricaturing his position,” as Schweickart tells us, does it ring any bells for you. It would for me, even if I was unfamiliar with this vision. He says “I have been trying to imagine what Albert’s proposals would require, concretely, if we tried to implement them” but fails to say that in my writing I do the same thing, describing actual planning sessions, the actual work situations and processes one might expect, and so on, but making perfectly clear that it is just to get a feeling for possibilities, to see the possible texture, and so on. Such features will emerge fully, and in diverse patterns, only in practice.

At this point, Schweickart says, “It is inconceivable to me that such a system would work. It is hard for me to imagine any rational being thinking otherwise.”

Well, he now has a conundrum. If his image of parecon is accurate, he deduces that I must be irrational, and likewise the people who he notes, and who he admires, who have urged attention to parecon, and the people creating parecon institutions, and the people translating it into numerous languages, and so on, must also be irrational. That’s why Schweickart wrings his hands trying to explain what is to him the inexplicable “parecon phenomenon.” Why in hell’s bells are there parecon web pages in multiple languages, overseen by interested parties in numerous countries? Why are there pareconish institutions popping up, people doing their university theses on it, and so on? Madness. Interestingly, it doesn’t occur to Schweickart to even entertain the possibility that just perhaps we are rational, and he has missed some key insights and relations.

Schweickart says, getting explicit I guess for consistency’s sake, “it’s an impolite question, but it has to be asked. Why have Chomsky, et al. endorsed such nonsense?” Clearly, he deduces, I must have tricked or pleaded Chomsky into it, and likewise for even those advocates that I don’t know, that I have never communicated with, etc. That’s also why people are creating new institutions using balanced job complexes, I guess. Silly people. Schweickart’s second explicit question is why have I not renounced this idiotic system. He decides it is because I am so driven by hope that classlessness is possible that I have lost touch with reason. Okay, that could be true. Such things do happen. Readers and others will have to decide.

Final Evaluation: Shareable Vision or Disposable Nonsense?

At any rate, having in his view buried parecon as utterly beyond the pale in its divorce from reality, Schweickart finally says something about its merits if it were viable. He asks, quite reasonably, “Why would anyone want to live in such a system?”

He asserts, not so reasonably, “It is a system obsessed with comparison (Is your job complex more empowering than mine?), with monitoring (You are not working at average intensity, mate–get with the program), with the details of consumption (How many rolls of toilet paper will I need next year? Why are some of my neighbors still using the kind not made of recycled paper?).”

I fail to see, I admit, when I ignore Schweickart’s derisive tone and add just a little context, all of which Schweickart presumably read about in detail but discounted as not even worth noting, what the problem is with the above concerns - not obsessions, of course.

In the broad scale, for example, it is indeed important, even paramount, whether job complexes are balanced, and this is not just for personal fairness, which is important enough, but to avoid class division and class rule. If that claim is true, than Schweickart’s rendition is silly, isn’t it? So why didn’t he take up the claim, I wonder.

As to Schweickart’s concern about monitoring, how important parecon workers find differentials in effort and how much time and energy they want to give to discerning them will be up to them. I bet all workers will feel that whatever choice is made in their workplace, it is a gigantic improvement over a competitive market imposing vast income differentials based on variables other than effort, not to mention imposing class differentiation in decision making in the firm. Where is the obsession part?

Likewise, regarding consumption, I claim that being concerned, not obsessed, about consumption’s social, ecological, and personal implications, as well as about its implications for producers, particularly during a planning period but in general thereafter too, will, in a civilized society, be considered natural and part of life - somewhat onerous but also somewhat engaging and interesting - and in any case a vast improvement on being excluded from significantly influencing all large scale consumption/production decisions, and from having accurate and full information or valuations, not to mention suffering all kinds of pollution, shoddy production, advertising, and so on, as a by-product.

But while I don’t see even a single problem to work on in Schweickart’s list of damning ills, I do see a problem with Schweickart leaving out gains that might help explain what attracts people like myself, other advocates, noted commentators, and so on, to parecon - minor virtues like attaining equitable income distribution, accurate valuations of products, self management, classlessness, ecological attentiveness, solidarity based on shared self interests, and so on.

Schweickart is disdainful that my book Parecon: Life After Capitalism didn’t discuss strategy for attaining a parecon. Well, before talking about attaining a system, one needs to have agreement that it is worth attaining. I was working on that prior problem, in the book that he read. In other writings I have addressed at length more strategic matters, of concern to folks who already advocate attaining parecon.

Schweickart says, “Where does this leave us? Must we give up on the dream of a humane future beyond capitalism? I think not–but we must think hard about the viability of the alternatives we propose. We must also pay attention to the ethical foundations of our proposals.” I find this pretty incredible, I have to say. It’s not that I disagree, on the contrary, I very much agree. That’s the problem. Schweickart read Parecon and, despite being a philosopher and according to the above considering ethical foundations centrally important, said not a single word about the book’s very explicit presentation of ethnical foundations. I wonder why.

Schweickart says, “in particular, we should reject the obsessive egalitarianism that underlies the Parecon proposal. This strict egalitarianism is morally problematic.” There’s that word again, obsession, obsessive, whatever. Well maybe. But before rushing to the conclusion that only a fool would advocate pareconish egalitarianism, you might wonder what you would be rejecting if you followed Schweickart’s advice? Mainly, first, you would be rejecting the idea that we shouldn’t have a class that monopolizes empowering labor and rules the economy above a class that carries out orders and does rote and tedious labor. You would be rejecting the idea that we should equalize access to empowering conditions. And likewise, second, you would be rejecting the idea that everyone should have a share of the total social product proportionate to the duration, intensity, and onerousness of the socially valued labor they contributed to its production. That’s way too egalitarian, too, it seems.

Schweickart says, “[parecon would] undercut the generosity of spirit a socialist ethic should promote.” When I read that sentence, I admit I was at a loss to understand. How could having equitable incomes and classless allocation of empowering conditions, instead of having gross income differentials and class division, undermine generosity, I wondered?

Schweickart explained. “Suppose, for example, that I am happy with my work and with my level of consumption. Then I learn that you got more than I did without working any harder. May I take vicarious pleasure in your good fortune? May I fantasize that I too might one day get lucky?” Is this really the substance of Schweickart’s concern about equitable distribution and empowerment? He goes on, “if your greater income is a reward for your greater contribution, may I feel good that you are so honored?”

Well, let’s see. Does Schweickart feel good that NBA players earn fifty or even a hundred times what he does? Would he feel good working in a plant where managers existed and earned ten or twenty times what he did, instead of in a plant where he and everyone had similarly empowering labor, and earned differently only due to their actual efforts? What would he say to the custodian who cleans his office at night while he is at home who doesn’t take vicarious joy out of Schweickart earning two or three times as much, but instead says he isn’t so pleased at Schweickart earning more for doing a far more cushy job and that he is tired as hell of having no say over his life and sick of economic institutions that enforce a class above him ruling over him?

Schweickart says “May I consider honing my own talents so that I too might be rewarded more?” How about honing his talents, instead, so he can enjoy the status and pleasure of achievement, as well as fulfilling his capacities? And what does he think when people opt to hone their bargaining power, which is what is actually relevant in a market system? Is that good? Talents, by the way, are generally overwhelmingly inborn…which is why no matter how long Schweickart honed his talents, he would not be able to earn like Kobe Bryant or Bode Miller. What Schweickart really means, is may I consider increasing my skills and knowledge through training, and in a parecon, of course, if that contributes to socially valued productivity (which is what Schweickart is asking about) it is remunerated like all valued effort. Likewise, power has to do with many variables, which is why no matter what he hones, Schweickart is not going to earn like a CEO of a corporation, or its lawyers, in a market system.

Schweickart is talking about incomes, above, as if the issue is quite modest differentials that are forbidden. But quite modest differentials, perhaps up to two-to-one in some cases, are precisely what arise from differences in duration, intensity, and onerousness, and certainly not forbidden in a parecon. Differences in property, power, or even contribution to output (which includes being lucky enough to have better tools, or to happen to be producing something more valued, or to be lucky enough to be born Barbara Streisand or otherwise productively genetically endowed, not to mention due to being greedy and callous enough to accrue sufficient bargaining power to compel huge payments) that markets reward all yield not modest income differences but huge income differences that in turn lead to concentrations of power and wealth and obliterate self management and solidarity while generating a class divided competitive result.

Schweickart says, in a parecon “If you got more than me without working any harder, I am a victim of injustice. Righteous indignation is the appropriate response, not pleasure or inspiration. I experience your success as my humiliation. This is not an ethic of solidarity.” Well, maybe that’s how things would appear for Schweickart, I don’t know. But actually, in a parecon one person’s great success - say inventing something, performing incredibly well, being brilliant at some task, having great productivity in some pursuit, or whatever, will have exactly the implications Schweickart describes. We will celebrate it, be inspired by it, enjoy it, take vicarious pleasure in it, etc. There will be no need to be materially jealous of it, however, because income isn’t involved in the corporate market sense. In fact, we all benefit together. Increases in output increase the average social income. Increases in tools to do work without suffering harsh conditions, improve the average balanced job complex of society. Increases in knowledge, art, etc. are equally accessible to all. And so on. My income goes up only if I work harder, longer, etc. - and why would anyone begrudge that - or if great achievements that we can all revel in push up the social average for everyone. What Schweickart says is that if in a parecon things happened which in fact don’t happen there, such as people being remunerated for inborn talent, people would find it unjust. It’s an odd formulation, but it’s true. In contrast, people who aren’t on top find what actually happens in a market system to be unjust. And it isn’t just that parecon eliminates the most damning economic obstacles to solidarity - giant in come differences, class domination, etc. - it creates a context in which we each have to be concerned with everyone else’s well being to most effectively advance our own. Social averages affect everyone. Regarding interpersonal relations and solidarity, parecon accomplishes what Schweickart seems to be asking for.

Schweickart is saying, just to hammer this home, if we have a system that achieves equity - having defined equity as income according to effort and sacrifice - people will see violations of that type of equity as unjust. That’s correct. He also implies that people will become obsessed lunatics, seeing any deviation that arise, however small and due to ignorance of exact measure, as reason for heartbreak or anger. That’s absurd. He ignores that in a parecon remuneration is not only morally just but provides appropriate economic incentives. Cause for feeling relations are unjust exist, however, intrinsically and always in what a market system constantly and persistently imposes on us, unless one is deluded, or self delusional, about what the word “unjust” means.

Schweickart moves from implying that there is something contrary to solidarity about workers in a plant being concerned if one of them against the logic of the system is being lazy all day but is taking pay that they rightfully earned (though he doesn’t seem to think that having managers govern your day from above, and earn more pay for working shorter hours, less hard, and in less onerous conditions, all in accord with system dictates, will generate any feelings contrary to solidarity), to saying, as a way to ridicule parecon yet again, “strict egalitarianism is the ethic of squabbling siblings. (Gary got a bigger piece of pie than me. That’s not fair! Gary gets to stay up later than me. That’s not fair! Dad likes Gary better than me. That’s not fair!) It is not an ethical principle that should command our allegiance.”

I don’t know quite what to say. The book Parecon includes an extended discussion of the underlying morals of the system, including, bearing on Schweickart’s concern, remuneration for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially useful labor, including extensively comparing it to other options. If the above is really what Schweickart thinks after reading those discussions, perhaps he is worse at philosophy than he is at economics.

The Ideological Difference: To Market, or Not?

And now comes the real heart of it. Schweickart says, “If we want to construct an economically viable, ethically desirable, alternative to capitalism, we should distance ourselves not only from Albert’s obsessive egalitarianism, but also from his implacable hostility to markets.” Now I am not only obsessive, but implacable. That aside, Schweickart is, in fact, an advocate of market socialism, as he would proudly verify, a system which I reject for a host of reasons, some of which he quotes: “Markets aren’t a little bad, or even just very bad in some contexts. Instead, in all contexts, markets instill anti-social motivations in buyers and sellers, misprice items that are exchanged, misdirect aims regarding what to produce in what quantities and by what means, mis-remunerate producers, introduce class divisions and class rule, and embody an imperial logic that spreads itself throughout economic life.”

Indeed, I think all the above, which Schweickart quoted, though I could extend the list greatly, and I argue very closely why these ills arise from markets, among other problems. Schweickart’s response is “Markets indeed have defects, but they have virtues as well.” They do all the above nasty things - he doesn’t deny any of my claims - but, oh yes, they also do accomplish some useful things sufficiently for the economy to run. Well, I agree with that. I don’t think, however, that it is enough to offset all the above deficits, especially since participatory planning can accomplish allocation not just sufficiently for an economy to run, but in accord with producers’ and consumers’ preferences, in accord with assessments of true social costs and benefits, and without all the ills noted for markets, instead fostering solidarity, elevating diversity, furthering equity, and embodying self management.

Schweickart says, “we need to think dialectically about markets.” I think he means we need to pay attention to both virtues and debits of markets, and again I agree. That’s why I am a market abolitionist. In fact, sometimes looking around at what markets have wrought, and thinking through the properties of a system built on the precept that we should buy cheap and sell dear so as to fleece our exchange partner because nice guys finish last, I admit that I wonder how any rational person could possibly advocate markets, but I of course know many who do.

Schweickart says, “markets are democratic (in that they respond to consumer preferences), and they are undemocratic, (since they tend to exacerbate income inequality).” This badly understates the situation. I can’t provide full details here - this essay is way too long already - but insofar as I am correct that markets inexorably induce a class division in which about 20% of the population overwhelmingly determines economic outcomes and the other 80% overwhelmingly obeys instructions, functions in contexts set by others, operates according to other’s agendas, etc., and insofar as markets compel, against everyone’s will, surplus maximization and unending accumulation, and insofar as they obscure true social costs and values which is information essential to informed decision making in general and specially regarding the ecology, markets make a travesty even of democracy, much less of self management. This is not to mention that via accumulation they yield huge centers of coercive power - corporations.

Schweickart says, “Markets enhance the space of individual freedom, (since consumer choices are not subject to the approval of others), and they contract the space of individual freedom, (since market choices often have third-party effects).” Again, to me this is strangely formulated. First off, in markets of course purchases are subject to approval, there are all kinds of laws preventing violations of noise norms, health norms, and so on and so forth, and notice, this is not a bad thing. But, more relevant, saying that my suffering disease or my having to pay to treat others suffering it, because markets ignore the social impact of transactions (third party effects) and therefore generate incredible pollution, is not a sidebar concern - but is enough reason, even just in itself, to abhor markets and seek an alternative.

Schweickart says, “Markets provide incentives for constructive behavior (efficient use of resources, innovation) and for destructive behavior (consumer manipulation, disregard of ecological consequences).” Actually, since markets require that we use resources and undertake innovation only and solely to enlarge surplus - not to meet needs except as a means to the other end - everything about them is alienated including their derivative “efficiency” and “innovation.” In a market system, save insofar as some doctors and nurses rebel, we get health care because it is profitable - indeed, only if it is profitable - not because the system, or its members, are concerned about us. Pursuit of profit, or surplus, determines outcomes. Of course, beyond hospitals, this means pharmaceutical companies jack up prices at the expense of piling up corpses, vast stores of innovation goes into creating manipulative packaging and advertising, and so on. More, on what Schweickart admits is the for him lesser downside, markets don’t just provide a little inclination to manipulate via ads or dump poisons on neighborhoods, they make such behavior absolutely essential in order to compete with other firms. They make it ubiquitous, not minor. Firms innovate a product for the same reason they dump toxic waste, to make surpluses with which to stay in business, and the latter is often far more rational for the firm than the former. Indeed, it is true that markets propel innovation and production, so much so that we have to work far longer hours and far more intensely than our needs for produced goods warrant.

Schweickart says, “Neither market fundamentalism nor market rejectionism is an appropriate response to the reality of economic complexity.” Why is this so? Is it because the middle ground is always more sensible? Well, that’s just not the case. We don’t say about dictatorship, which can accomplish political functions sufficiently for states to run, that dictatorship has, in context, some benefits and some debits, and so we shouldn’t be dictatorship rejectionists. The reality of economic complexity, or of political complexity, does not rule out having values that preclude employing certain institutions which run rampant over those values. Call me implacable if you wish, but I remain a market abolitionist, even though I know markets are going to be around for some time to come.

Schweickart says, “God knows, we do not want to live in a world dominated by rapacious, unaccountable economic institutions that pit worker against worker, drive levels of inequality to almost unimaginable levels, and are in the process of devastating the ecology of the planet.” Indeed. I agree. So I propose, in place of both capitalism and what is called market socialism but which is really a coordinator class ruled economy that is better called market coordinatorism - participatory economics. I claim it is classless. I claim it attends to true social costs and benefits including ecological ones. I claim it creates a context in which workers and consumers have shared rather than opposed interests and operate via cooperative rather than competitive allocation. I claim this system attains equity rather than vast inequality. Do I claim these things due to an obsessive irrationality that is shared with other advocates? That’s not for me to judge.

The Final Tally: No Going Back

Schweickart says, “But a life preoccupied with negotiating work complexes [read: once a year balancing job complexes], forecasting one’s future consumption [read: during a once yearly planning process], revising lists [read: ditto], scrutinizing the consumption lists of one’s anonymous neighbors [read: no one but a lunatic would do this, nor would doing it have any effect], posting notes on the qualitative aspects of desired purchases [read: such as letting consumers know that a certain kind of work is horrendously debilitating and dangerous which is why supply for its products is being held down, or letting producers know that a climate change or simultaneous collapse of old heating units is the cause of a greatly unexpected rise in demand for boilers so that workers ought to quickly accommodate it], and voting on national plans vastly more complicated than the Federal Budget [read: to facilitate planning that is already almost complete choosing modest differences in some key large scale variables by vote] is not the answer.”

Okay, I relent. If one can find a way to attain economic justice and equity, self management, and classlessness, that doesn’t have these (for Schweickart) incredible debits, that’s fine by me. It would certainly be worth considering very seriously. But the idea that the way to attain truly just outcomes is to retain markets, corporate divisions of labor, and remuneration for power or output, I find less than unconvincing.

Parecon is for me a classless, self managing, economic system out there in possibility space that we can try to discern and reveal, and that we can also work toward attaining, refining our understanding of it, and our implementations of aspects of it, and even our implementations of all of it, as we learn more about its properties. Yes, I admit, I take this as a matter of (I hope well informed) faith. I assume a classless economy is possible. I can’t know that for sure, however, as yet. And in the book Parecon I tried to discern and describe some of that classless, self managing, economy’s key features as best I could, to help facilitate making the economy real, not just possible, before too many more souls are sundered by obsessive, implacable, irrational, class division.

I Still Think It’s Nonsense, A Reply to Albert’s Reply
by David Schweickart; March 15, 2006

“It doesn’t occur to Schweickart to even entertain the possibility that just perhaps we are rational, and he has missed some key insights and relations.”[i]

Albert is wrong here. It most certainly did occur to me as I worked on my critique that maybe I was missing something—although I couldn’t see what. (As I pointed out, Parecon boasts a luminous set of endorsements.) So I read his lengthy reply with care. But you know what? I’m more convinced than ever that there is something deeply irrational about his project.

Not the general considerations that motivate the effort. I too want to live in a world without exploitation, where everyone has good, empowering work, where income differentials are reasonable, and where consumers are not manipulated into seeking happiness in things that are not good for them as individuals or for our fragile ecosystem. I too believe that a better world is possible, that there is an alternative, not just to the rapacious brand of corporate capitalism that dominates the earth today, but to capitalism itself. I happen to think that our best bet is Economic Democracy–the structure of which I will mention shortly.

What is irrational, or at least wholly untenable, is the economic model Albert defends as a workable means of obtaining these desirable ends. What is irrational (so it seems to me) is his inability to grasp the force of the criticisms of the model.

I have to say, I admire Albert for posting my article on his website. I had thought of asking him to do so, but I didn’t think he would be willing to post so harsh a critique. There aren’t many intellectuals who would take such a risk.

I also admire the tone of his article. To be sure, he gets testy at times, but my article was nothing if not provocative. For the most part his tone was measured and his presentation of my position accurate. I will try to follow his good example in what follows.

An Alternative Model

Before getting to the particulars of my reply, let me sketch the basic institutions of what I take to be an alternative to capitalism different from Parecon that is both feasible and at the same time vastly superior to capitalism: ecologically sustainable, more efficient than capitalism, more rational in its development, more egalitarian, more democratic, more inclined to promote leisure and meaningful work over mindless consumption. I call it Economic Democracy.

I can’t defend here the claim that Economic Democracy has the merits just mentioned. I have done so at length elsewhere, most recently in After Capitalism (2002).[ii] Let me simply note that Economic Democracy is a form of market socialism wherein enterprises are managed democratically by their workforces, and investment is allocated, not by market forces, but by democratically-accountable public banks. In effect Economic Democracy replaces two of the three markets that constitute capitalism with more democratic alternatives. It maintains a competitive market for goods and services, but replaces the labor market with workplace democracy and the capital market with social control of investment.

Needless to say, Albert, a self-proclaimed “market abolitionist,” cannot endorse this model, but it is important for the reader to understand that there are alternatives to capitalism other than Parecon. Albert often writes as if criticism of Parecon is tantamount to embracing capitalism. Indeed, he is convinced that markets of any kind “inexorably induce a class division in which about 20% of the population overwhelmingly determine economic outcomes and the other 80% overwhelmingly obeys instructions, . . . compel against everyone’s will surplus maximization and endless accumulation, and . . . make a travesty of democracy,” so there is no point in making fine distinctions. [iii] I think there is.

Parecon: Critique and Reply

Let me rehearse briefly the main points of my critique. Parecon has three fundamental components.

· All job-complexes are to be equally empowering, both within enterprises and across the economy as a whole.

· Remuneration is to be based on effort only, not on one’s contribution to society, for the latter includes such morally irrelevant factors as talent, training, job assignment, tools and luck.

· All elements of production and consumption—labor, resources, consumer goods—are to be allocated by participatory planning, not the market.

In “Nonsense on Stilts” I argue that

A. Achieving balanced job complexes in the manner suggested by Albert, namely, breaking existing jobs into tasks, assigning each task a numerical rank, reassembling them so that all jobs equally empowering, then deciding who does what, is not even remotely feasible.

B. Remuneration according to effort won’t work because those making the decisions have neither the means nor the motivation to make accurate assessments.

C. Participatory planning of an entire economy would be a nightmare, for at least four reasons:

1. Consumption requests are public, which greatly compromises individual privacy.

2. These requests must be made annually by every citizen, each of whom must look at his past year’s consumption, forecast changes, then make careful, quantitative adjustments. Doing this even once is a hugely tedious undertaking. Doing it several times, as will be required under Parecon, is mind-boggling.

3. Unless requests are made in excruciating detail, producers won’t know what to produce. In any event, they have little motivation to find out what people really want, so production will not come close to optimizing consumer satisfaction.

4. A national vote to choose among several highly aggregated final plans is a meaningless exercise, since few if any individuals would have the time, ability or motivation to make an intelligent choice.

Albert’s reply to these criticisms may be summarized briefly as follows.

To A: Sure it’s difficult to balance job complexes, but it should be done anyway. Moreover, he never meant his discussion as to how this might be done to be taken literally.

To B: Work must not only involve effort, but it must also be “socially useful” to merit remuneration. Moreover, each enterprise has a fixed pool of income to distribute among its workers, so evaluators do indeed have an incentive to be accurate and fair. (”I don’t know how Schweickart missed all this,” he says (CwoC: 9).

To C: Markets are worse. Regarding my specific charges, Albert says:

1. Schweickart is wrong. The process is anonymous.

2. The procedure need not be tedious. General categories may be used. It’s much less time-consuming than shopping.

3. Producers have a host of ways of determining what people want. It is scare-mongering to suggest that producers wouldn’t do their best to find out what people want and meet their demands.

4. He doesn’t see the problem.

My Reply to His Reply Re. A

Albert acknowledges that balanced job complexes would be quite difficult to achieve and certainly could not be achieved by “some idiotic mechanical calculation” such as the one set out in detail in his major chapter on the topic, which I took seriously enough to think through concretely. That was only a thought-experiment, he now says, a way of explaining the conceptual possibility of achieving such an end.

In fact I stated explicitly that Albert didn’t think this procedure could be implemented with precision. I quoted from his book “that in real circumstances the procedures of job balancing are not precisely as we describe above ” (P: 106). (Notice, he doesn’t call them “idiotic” in the book, just “not precisely as described.”) But I went on to note that he gives us no clue as to what other, more realistic procedures he might have in mind. To the question, “In practical, real world situations, could workers really rate and combine tasks to define balanced job complexes within and across workplaces?” he merely asserts (with great confidence), “Provided we understand that we are talking about a social process that never attains perfection, but that does fulfill workers’ own sense of balance, the answer is surely yes” (P: 110).

In his reply to my critique, he takes a small step toward being more concrete. He says we could begin at Loyola (my university) by offering some training to staff so that they could do more empowering work, and that we could let the custodians, “perhaps with a little training, perhaps not even needing that,” do some of the empowering tasks the deans now do. (He doesn’t say what “empowering tasks” these might be.)

That’s as good as it gets, in concrete terms.[iv]

Let me be clear. I am in no way suggesting that jobs shouldn’t be redesigned so as to spread around the drudgery and to make everyone’s work as meaningful as possible. One of the great merits of a democratically-run firm (the basic enterprise form of Economic Democracy) is that it allows for this possibility. If firms become all the more productive from doing so, that’s great. If workers have to sacrifice some efficiency, and hence some income, but feel it worth it, well and good. That’s their choice—as it should be.

If this is all Albert means, finally, by “balanced job complexes,” then we are not in disagreement.

In fact, he means more that that. For he wants to insure that job complexes are also balanced across enterprises. But this would require

a) some reasonably objective, quantifiable standard as to the average “empowerment” or “meaningfulness” of every workplace in the country,

b) some sort of “central committee” with the authority to insist that workers in the more empowered workplaces spend part of their work-year in less empowered places, and

c) some means of insuring the people get transferred in such a way that each enterprise in the country winds up with the right number of people with the requisite skills after all the reshuffling has taken place.

I leave it to the reader to decide if these requirements are feasible or desirable.

My Reply to His Reply Re. B

In replying to my objection as to the unfeasibility of rewarding only effort, Albert adds two crucial elements to his model that are lacking in the original presentation. These go a long way toward blunting my objection that within a firm evaluators have neither the means nor the motivation to evaluate their peers fairly. But these additions are both highly problematic–unless one is willing to have the enterprises operate in a competitive market.

Albert now insists that an individual’s effort as well as the output of the enterprise itself must be “socially useful.” By this he means that production must be organized efficiently.

My firm has to provide outputs to society commensurate to its labor and technical assets, inputs and time spent, if all its effort is to be judged socially useful. If my firm doesn’t do that, the overall remuneration for my firm’s employees will go down, because not all its labor was socially useful [CwoC: 8].[v]

He also now insists that each enterprise is given a specific pool of money to pay out in wages, so that the enterprise evaluation committee does indeed have an incentive to be honest and fair, not simply give everyone high evaluations. (Parecon-Wobegon)

Let me focus my response here on the enterprise. Albert states repeatedly in his reply that enterprises received a fixed sum–a “pool of payments that the firm’s output warrants” given the assets under its control. He notes that “total remuneration available to our workforce would be reduced [if] some of the labor we did was socially useless, or was carried out at low intensity relative to average” [CwoC: 8].

He wonders how I could have missed all this.

Well, for one thing, the fact that each enterprise is be allotted a fixed pool of money to be allocated among its workers is nowhere mentioned in Parecon. Or at least I’ve not been able to locate any such mention. I reread Chapter 7 (Remuneration). There he raises the question, “What’s to prevent the whole workforce from exaggerating their effort?” He says he’ll take that matter up in the next chapter. I reread Chapter 8 (Allocation). No mention of the problem in the section “Measures of Work,” or anywhere else in the chapter, so far as I could tell. Maybe this crucial stipulation is given somewhere else. If so, I would be grateful to Michael if he would, in his reply to this, supply me with the relevant quote.

As for labor needing to be “socially useful,” he does say that “by effort we mean anything that constitutes a personal sacrifice for the purpose of providing socially useful goods and services” (P: 152), but he says nothing about the labor counting as less socially useful if it is performed inefficiently. Nor does he say anywhere in Parecon that a firm will be penalized if its level of effort is less than average intensity.

I suspect there is a reason for these omissions. If enterprise incomes are to be allocated according to the double criteria, social usefulness (efficiency) and degree of average effort, two troublesome questions emerge.

1) How is the degree of social usefulness and the degree of average effort to be determined? Notice, we are speaking here of a quantitative measurement, not just a loose qualitative judgement. If the workers in Enterprise A and Enterprise B all put in thirty hours per week, but those in Enterprise A receive, say, $40,000 per worker and those in Enterprise B receive $50,000, those in Enterprise A are entitled to know the precise reason for the precise penalty. Was their workplace inefficiently organized by industry standards? Were they slackers by society-wide standards? How was the $10,000-per-worker penalty calculated?

2) Who is going to make this determination? Workers within an enterprise may well capable of monitoring the efforts of their cohorts–particularly if they are allowed to take output into consideration–but they are in no position to assess the efforts of workers elsewhere. Nor are they in any position to say whether or not their efforts have been, collectively, as “socially useful” as those of other firms.

With Albert’s new stipulation, each person’s income in Parecon depends, not only on the evaluation one receives from one’s peers, but also on the judgement of a national board, located far away, which must pass judgement on the collective efforts of one’s peers and the degree to which the firm’s output was socially useful.

A brief comparison with Economic Democracy on this point is in order. Workers under Economic Democracy, like those under Parecon, have a fixed pool of income to allocate among their peers. Their pool, however, is the net profit their enterprise has made. It is not determined by a central allocation board off in Washington, or wherever. The workers may, if they so choose, agree to reward everyone according to effort, as under Parecon, but they might also choose to reward skill or seniority or managerial responsibility more highly. It is their decision. In any event, every worker has an incentive to work conscientiously and to see that their peers do also. They also have a direct incentive to organize the enterprise as efficiently as possible.

To be sure, firms under Economic Democracy compete with one another for customers, and hence may be tempted to mislead consumers and avoid the true costs of production–a market drawback–but at the same time they are not subject to the judgments of far-removed authorities as to whether they are working hard enough or with the appropriate degree of efficiency. Which means they will not be tempted to cook their books or use other means to induce their external evaluators to give them high marks for effort and social usefulness.[vi]

My Replies to His Replies Re. C

Let me reply briefly to each of the four issues listed above.

1. Albert says that my concern about lack of consumption privacy is misplaced, since all consumption requests will be anonymous. Again I couldn’t find him saying that anywhere.

· He does say that “every consumer participant negotiates through successive rounds of back and forth exchange of their proposals with every other participant” (P: 128).

* He does say that “individuals present their consumption requests to neighborhood councils which collectively approve or disapprove the requests” (P: 130).

* He does say that “while no consumption request justified by an effort rating is denied by a consumption council without a very good reason, . . . neighbors could express an opinion that a request was unwise” (P: 152).

Maybe this could all be done without revealing the identity of the individuals involved, but that seems unlikely. It’s certainly not an issue Albert addresses.

2. Albert fails to see any problem with each individual, at the beginning of each year, having to pull up her list of all the things she consumed last year, then adjust it for the coming year. And then revise it several times, as prices change, due to imbalances between proposed supply and requested demand. He thinks this would be much better than “shopping and escaping ads.”[vii]I’m not so sure everyone would agree. (What would be done with those people who fail to turn in their lists or fill out the forms sloppily or keep turning in requests that exceed their budgets. Let them starve? Talk to them nicely? Shoot them, when patience runs out?)

He adds that not everyone need submit detailed consumption proposals. For those not wanting to go to all that trouble, they can just focus on a set of categories, not specific items. You need not specify how much chicken or duck you’d like to consume during the coming year, he says. You can just note (pounds of) poultry or just say (a hundred pounds of) “meat.”

But it’s not clear that this helps much. Albert seems not to have noticed that when one uses general categories, one must still specify a quantity. I can’t just say “meat,” or “vegetables,” or “office supplies.” Facilitation boards need to know how much of these items are needed–which means units need be specified. Pounds may work well enough for “meat,” but what units are appropriate for vegetables or office supplies or clothing or car repairs or birthday gifts? These lists are going to have to me far more detailed than Albert imagines.

Having last year’s list on hand doesn’t help much. I look at the first two items on my list. Last year I consumed 286 pounds of “meat” and ate sixteen avocados. How much meat do I want to consume this year, and how many avocados? I fill in the data, and continue through the thousands of items on the list, “massaging the numbers” so that the total amount I want to spend corresponds to the total amount of income I expect to receive. Of course, if I expect my life–and hence my consumption patterns–to be exactly the same the coming year as it was last year, I can just fill in the same numbers as last year. I may still have to adjust things a bit, at least on the later rounds, since prices will change. But what if my life is not the same? What if I don’t want it to be? How do I forecast my future consumption wants? Albert assures us that we can make adjustments along the way–which means calling up those lists again, redoing them, sending them off to facilitation boards, who convey the changes in demand to producers, who must decide if they want to work more (or less) in this area or that so as to accommodate the changes.

3. Here we are at the heart of the matter regarding non-market allocation. Albert doesn’t seem to recognize–despite my pressing the point in my critique–that if consumers don’t specify in detail what they want, then producers–who must produce specific items, not general categories–will have great difficulty in knowing what to produce. Worse still, they will have little incentive to find out.

Albert tells us that in Parecon “there are no competing companies producing products, only ‘product industries’ creating diverse styles and qualities of different goods for different purposes, all with the intention that everyone gets what best meets their needs” (P: 217).

He asserts that “statistical studies enable facilitation boards to break down total requests for generic types of goods by the percent of people who will want different types of records, soda or bicycles” (P: 217). In his reply to my critique he says that producers will be “sensible at what they do, and therefore have a host of ways of knowing the proportion of people in various sizes, and favoring various colors” (CwoC: 14). He adds that consumers “can adapt their choices as the year progresses and so too can producers adapt their products.”

This is a shockingly inadequate answer to what has long been recognized as two of the most basic problems with comprehensive economic planning:

· Without detailed information from consumers, producers cannot know what people want. The fact the goods are purchased is not, in itself an indication. “If parecon producers offer up skirts or sweaters people don’t like, people won’t purchase them at distribution centers and styles will be changed,” he says (CwoC: 15). But if nothing else is available, consumers will take what they can get. The drab, ill-fitting clothing offered to citizens of the Soviet Union was usually purchased.

· Moreover, producers have no motivation to figure out what consumers really want. Enterprises in the Soviet Union were given production quotas–which they tried to fulfill in the easiest manner possible. (One is reminded of a Soviet-era cartoon: a flat-bed truck pulling out of a factory carrying one gigantic nail. “We were asked to produce ten tons,” the factory manager beamed.)

Will nail factories–and all other enterprises–in Parecon be given production quotas from “facilitation boards?” If so, why should they not try to satisfy the quotas as conveniently for themselves as possible? Alternatively, enterprises can be told to decide as best they can what and how much to produce—and that their income will depend on how well their products sell. That is to say, Parecon must cease to be a parecon and become a form of market socialism.

Albert’s hostility to markets blinds him to the astonishing amount of information that markets collect and synthesize, and the degree to which markets motivate enterprises to respond to consumer demand. People don’t have to plan their consumption a year in advance–or even a day in advance. There is no need for facilitation boards to collate these lists, decide which enterprises should be asked to produce which goods, in what quantities and for delivery on what dates. We do not need to rely on the good will of the producers to make an effort to disaggregate the quotas assigned them in such a way as to maximize consumer satisfaction.

In a market economy each purchase is a signal to the producer that the article in question is in demand, where it is in demand, and when it is in demand. Producers are highly motivated not only to satisfy these demands, but to introduce new or improved products that people might come to prefer.

To be sure, the mechanism is not perfect. “False needs” can be created. The true costs of production (especially to the environment) can be understated. But these defects, which can be addressed with suitable regulation, pale in comparison with the defects inherent in trying to regulate an entire economy via the allocational mechanisms proposed in Parecon. (Note–the markets whose virtues I am touting are markets for goods and services, not labor or financial markets. Economic Democracy proposes alternative to these latter, far more pernicious markets.)

4. Finally, there’s the matter of that final vote. Recall the procedure. Everyone–each of our 150 million or so households–fills out an annual consumption request and makes a commitment to work the hours necessary to balance that request. Communities and enterprises also submit requests–for infrastructure improvements, for funds to purchase new technology, etc. Since overall supply and demand don’t balance at first, these proposals are sent back several times for modification. Then the top facilitation board sends out to all of us five plans. “What would distinguish the five plans is that each would entail slightly different total product, work expended, average consumption and average investment” (P: 138). We are then asked to vote. Which one of the five would we prefer? In his reply to me he sees no problem with “choosing modest differences in some key large scale variables by vote” (CwoC: 23).

I am truly baffled by Albert’s inability to grasp the issue, his inability to put himself in the place of an average citizen, presumably conscientious, who wants to make an intelligent choice. How would she decide which of slightly different sets of total product she prefers? (”Total product” refers to the total output of goods and services for the year.) Which amounts of “total work expended” would she prefer? Which levels of “average consumption” and “average investment” seems best to her? Presumably, she can go into the data base with her computer and see what each of the five plans means for her own consumption allocation and work requirements, and whether her enterprise’s new investment proposal was funded, and whether her community’s requests have been honored. That is to say, she must pour over five different plans, each with (at least) four different categories, all of which “differ slightly” in general, but may differ significantly in their impact on her. Then she must vote. Or, if she is truly public-spirited, she will worry about the differing impacts of the differing plans on other people also, other enterprises than her own, other communities. Back to the computer. More comparisons to make.

Why does Albert want to put people through all this? Because he doesn’t want markets to play a role in translating consumer and worker choices into total output, nor does he want the top facilitation board to impose a final plan–as was done under Soviet central planning. He wants the citizens of Parecon to be able to say they chose their own plan, democratically. Let me reaffirm what I said in “Nonsense”: such a vote is a meaningless exercise.

Which is not to say that there should be no democratic control over the overall direction of the economy. I think there should be–which is why investment funds are generated via taxation in Economic Democracy and plowed back into the economy via a network of democratically-accountable public banks. The point is, it is not markets in toto that need be replaced by democratic mechanisms, only certain markets–e.g., the financial markets.

In Conclusion: Three Final Points

Let me conclude with three points of a more philosophical nature, the first concerning Albert’s conception of human nature, the other two concerning ethical matters.

1. There is a deep contradiction at the heart of Albert’s project. On the one hand, Parecon requires a massive amount of effective, conscious coordination (committees, councils, facilitation boards, etc.)—yet Albert is deeply hostile to “coordinators.”

This hostility may derive from Albert’s view of human nature. At first sight, Albert seems to be deeply sanguine about human nature. If there is no “coordinator class” twisting everything to their advantage, people will cooperate willingly, develop their talents appropriately and take on major responsibilities without the incentives of status, power or extra income. Yet, on closer investigation, we see that his view of human nature is not so sanguine. For he is convinced that any group of people who come to exercise authority on a non-rotating basis, even when subject to democratic accountability, will inevitably abuse this authority and consolidate themselves into an exploiting class. That’s just the way people are, he seems to think. Therefore, we must design our economy so that no one is ever in a position of authority long enough to consolidate his grip on power.

Albert appears not appreciate the skills involved in managing complex enterprises, working effectively in democratic assemblies, making difficult decisions in such a way as to minimize resentment and promote the common good. Like Lenin, Albert assumes that managerial tasks are now so simple that almost anyone, with a little training, can do them.

All citizens become employees and workers of one national “syndicate.” All that is required is that they should work equally, should do their regular share of the work and should receive equal pay. The accounting and control necessary for this have been simplified by capitalism to the utmost, till they have become the extraordinarily simple operations of watching, recording, and issuing receipts, within the reach of anybody who can read and write and knows the first four rules of arithmetic.[viii]

That’s what Lenin thought before the revolution. Not quite Parecon, but not far removed. Trying to manage an actually existing economy proved to be not so simple.

Economic Democracy does not underestimate the need for talented, conscientious, socially-responsible managers. (Having taught at Loyola University under both good and bad administrators, I can testify that competent administration makes a huge difference. The problem at Loyola is not that we–faculty, staff and students–can do without administrators. The problem is, the top administrators are not accountable to us, but to an absentee Board of Trustees, who have shown themselves to be much slower in perceiving incompetence than those of us more immediately affected.)

Economic Democracy does not underestimate, either, the importance of giving upper management a significant degree of autonomy. If administrative decisions are second-guessed and vetoed at every turn, few people will want to assume responsible positions–and those that do will tend to be far from the most competent. The trick to effective worker-self-management is not to abolish professional “coordinators,” but to strike the right balance between administrative autonomy and democratic accountability. Albert thinks human nature stands in the way of avoiding exploitation this way. I disagree.

2. Albert chides me, a philosopher, for not paying enough attention to the ethical underpinnings of Parecon. I did remark on what I take to be the “obsessive egalitarianism” of his project. He doesn’t see anything “obsessive” about his egalitarianism. He wonders if I feel good about NBA players making fifty, even a hundred times what I do. He wonders if I would feel good working in a plant where managers exist and make ten or twenty times more than me.

The fact of the matter is, it bothers me not at all that NBA players make so much. These people have talents I can’t dream of possessing. Such high incomes may not be good for their character, but–this is the important part–their incomes in no way detract from the quality of my life; indeed watching them in action enriches it.

As for managers, I think good ones are essential to an efficient enterprise. I think their skills and dedication should be honored and rewarded. I don’t think that managers of an enterprise need make ten or twenty times what average workers make, but there is little danger of that happening in a worker-run enterprise, where salary differentials have to be approved by the firm’s members. If in fact managerial skills are so scarce that workers have to pay such salaries to retain good “coordinators,” they should have the right to do so, but there is no reason to think that managerial talent (although real and important) is in such short supply.

I dream of a society without poverty or involuntary unemployment, where opportunities for meaningful work and significant leisure are abundant, and consumption patterns are sustainable. If there are still hierarchies of authority in such a society and material inequalities unrelated to effort, so be it. I think that a political project that focuses on abolishing hierarchies of authority and all inequalities unrelated to effort is deeply misguided. It has lost sight of what is really important. Hierarchies and inequalities need be kept in check by democratic procedures, but they are not, in themselves, the enemy.

3. Let me conclude by considering another ethical matter, one that was included in an earlier, much longer version of “Nonsense on Stilts” than the one posted by Albert. Let’s call it “democratic alienation.”

Albert stakes almost everything on the notion of participatory democracy. Parecon, he claims, will avoid both the authoritarian structures of Soviet planning and the coercive laws of market competition. Democracy is the antidote to both these moral poisons. But Albert seems not to understand that democracy does not necessarily promote solidarity. Democracy, even the most participatory, can itself be deeply alienating.

First of all, there’s the problem of “democratic distance.” There are no hierarchies in Parecon, says Albert; there is no “controlling class” of experts or managers. Instead, Paracon is awash with democratic assemblies: consumer and worker councils at the neighborhood, city, county, state and national levels, where important decisions are to be made. But such nested series of councils imply that a citizen votes for people (neighborhood level) who vote for people (city level) who vote for people (county level) who vote for people (state level) who vote for people (national level) to make binding decisions. Either that, or each citizen votes for her preferred candidates at all of these levels. In either case, the average citizen is far removed from the various loci of power, which are, in fact, hierarchically arranged. The plain truth is, there is no avoiding hierarchies of power in a large, complex society–or the discontent, at least among some, that these hierarchies inevitably breed.

Secondly, there’s the “inequality of democracy.” All participants in the various assemblies (and in society at large) face each other as equals in Parecon. But as anyone who has participated in a democratic assembly knows, all are not in fact equal. Some are quicker on their feet than others, some have more rhetorical skill, some are better adept at the formal rules of the game, some are more intimidating, some are more stubborn, some are more at home in the dominant culture of the assembly, etc. (I suspect that Albert is well-endowed with these advantages, which perhaps makes him more sanguine about democratic decision-making than is warranted.)

Please notice, these inequalities exist quite apart from the power-inequalities that so corrupt our present political system. Albert is sensitive to the latter inequalities, but he seems blind to the other kinds of inequalities that exist among human beings.

Thirdly, there is the fact that democratic decision-making, even among people of good will, even when the participants are equally endowed with the skills necessary for effective democratic participation, can be (and often is) experienced negatively. Inevitably, people will have different views concerning economic priorities. Debating these differences endlessly, particularly the minor points, can often feel like–and be–a waste of time. Such debates can engender cynicism, apathy, even bitterness. (Allowing a majority or supermajority cut off debate, which Albert does, does not solve the problem. It might even intensify the discontent if those cut off feel themselves to be an aggrieved minority.)

These three points do not constitute an argument for authoritarianism. They do, however, caution against over-reliance on an important yet delicate tool that can be damaged by careless use. The same is true for the market. The same is true for planning. All three of these mechanisms must be handled with care if they are not to lead to consequences quite other than those intended. If we want an economic system to be both economically viable and ethically desirable, we must use all three of these instruments judiciously, employing them in such a way that the strengths of each offset weaknesses of the others. Markets must be utilized to counteract “democratic overload.” Planning must supplement markets, to offset their irrationalities. Democratic assemblies must set the rules for markets and hold the authoritarian tendencies of planners in check. An efficient, rational, humane economy must be a three-way dialectic (a “trialectic?) of plan, market and democracy.

Notes
[i] Michael Albert, “Critique without Comprehension: Responding to David Schweickart Regarding Parecon,” February 24, 2006. This posting replies to my article, “Nonsense on Stilts: A Critique of Michael Albert’s Parecon,” which Albert also posted on the Z-Net website on the same date. Both are currently available on the Parecon website, zmag.org/parecon, under the heading “Schweickart Lambasts/Albert Replies.” They have also been posted on the Solidarity Economy website, www.solidarityeconomy.net.

[ii] For a more technical defense, both economically and philosophically, of basically the same model, see my Against Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 1993). This latter work also includes a critique of the model that he and Robin Hahnel were advocating at the time, which is now called “parecon.”

[iii] “Critique without Comprehension” p. 21. (Henceforth I’ll give the page numbers in the text of this reply, preceded by either “CwoC” for “Critique without Comprehension” or “P” for Parecon.) I have truncated Albert’s long list of market defects, which is repeated like a mantra throughout CwoC, and indeed throughout Parecon and his other writings on the subject. One might suspect he doth protest too much. Vehement repetition should not substitute for careful analysis. “Market” consequences depend on which markets operate and on the network of regulations and mechanisms of redress within which they function.

[iv]Albert is not at a loss for abstract suggestions: “We move toward balance by making changes in a social adjustment, many steps taken over considerable time, first won by movements seeking reforms, but then later enacted by self-managing workers’ and consumers’ councils” (CwoC: 4). I don’t find this sort of handwaving helpful. Nor do I find helpful his extended argument that if we managed to set up an economy of balanced job complexes, it wouldn’t be hard to maintain that balance. I’m skeptical of this conclusion, but it’s not worth arguing about if no plausible story can be told as to how we might get to our happy state in the first place.

[v] I don’t think Albert intends “socially useful” to be a moral category, in the sense that caring for the sick is more “socially useful” than, say, brewing beer. It would blatantly contradictory to insist that effort is the sole criteria for remuneration and at the same time say that the more socially useful forms of effort be rewarded more.

[vi] It is open to Albert to reply that the pool of income available t