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JimN
5th October 2010, 10:29
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Post-Capitalism: Parecon or a World without Money? Which way to a classless society?

Debate with Michael Albert (founder member of ZCommunications and author of "Parecon: Life After Capitalism") and Adam Buick (World Socialist Movement) about the alternative to capitalism.

Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
London
WC1R 4RL

Saturday 23rd October 7:30pm

All welcome. Admission free.

Parecon - form of money economy featuring workers' self-management and consumer councils, price-setting, and personal incomes based on effort and sacrifice not property or heredity.

"In the world you desire to attain there is, I presume, production. Likewise, I assume you agree that people will consume. More, beyond production and consumption, is there some regulation of what is produced and in what quantity? The alternative would be that anyone can produce anything, with no concern other than that they wish to. This is nonsense, but if there is regulation of how resources, energies, and labor are allocated to generate outputs, does that regulation reflect the preferences that both producers and consumers have and especially a full valuation of the relative contribution to well being and development of different choices? If it does, then to that extent it includes "money." The valuations are prices, albeit not necessarily as we have known them in market and centrally planned systems".
Michael Albert (ZCom)

Socialism - the abolition of the property-based money economy including markets, profits, rent and wages, with all land and goods owned and democratically controlled by the whole society.

"In implementing the long-standing socialist principle of from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs, socialist society breaks the link between work done and consumption. Rather than being allotted what to consume as under Parecon, people would be able to take from the common store of wealth set aside for individual consumption what they judged they needed to live and enjoy life, irrespective of what they had contributed to production. Every able-bodied person would be expected to contribute something, but we dont share your bleak view that, in this event, not enough would be produced to satisfy peoples needs (that demand would exceed supply, as you put it) - and that therefore, not just profits, but the wages system too would have to be retained as a means of both obliging people to work and of limiting their consumption. Just like under capitalism.
Our description of Parecon is post-capitalist capitalism, i.e. not post-capitalism at all".
Adam Buick (WSM)

Details of this and all our events can be found here:
http://www.meetup.com/The-Socialist-Party-of-Great-Britain/calendar/14655831/ (http://www.meetup.com/The-Socialist-Party-of-Great-Britain/calendar/14655831/)

Or visit our website here:
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/debates/index.html (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/debates/index.html)

AK
5th October 2010, 12:06
Socialism - there is no debate.

ckaihatsu
5th October 2010, 20:15
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The content of the wide array of issues raised in this thread of discussion is the main reason why I'm at RevLeft and why I think revolutionary leftist politics is worthwhile. I've always felt that much of the political culture has "pointed" towards some kind of concrete solution to the issues raised here, but I've been surprised that hardly anyone has attempted to actually tackle and balance out all of the dimensions that would be involved in a post-revolutionary economics.

It was not until becoming active at RevLeft that I've been in the proper kind of revolutionary leftist political culture to develop these efforts in a constructive way.

Here's the rundown from this, and past discussions:


- goods and services for taking / consumption

- compensation for mental / emotional / physical labor

- consideration of total hours worked, or time factor, in labor

- consideration of hazard and/or difficulty regarding type of labor

- method of "authorizing" actual work roles / job positions

- organizing power / "authority" within laborers' own ranks

- relative value of different types of labor, from one to the other

- "jurisdictional" authority regarding natural resources, with all assets and resources being collectivized

- basic societal "upkeep" vs. mass-decided societal "progress"

- central planning

- market socialism


Without meaning to be immodest I'm pleased to say that I've developed a model that addresses *all* of these issues. The crux of it is that material-representing currency is *eliminated* in favor of labor-hour-based labor credits that *only* confer an increasing ability to organize and compensate *future* liberated labor work effort / hours.

The model is at my blog entry and there are links there to further, more detailed explanations.

Jazzhands
5th October 2010, 21:18
This looks interesting...can anyone going to this post a transcript afterwards?

JimN
6th October 2010, 18:39
This looks interesting...can anyone going to this post a transcript afterwards?

Hi Jazzhands,

We will be filming the debate and I'll post a link to the recording when it becomes available.

Jim

JimN
17th October 2010, 13:52
Just a reminder that this debate is this coming Saturday 23rd October 7:30pm at Conway Hall.

All welcome. Admission free.