Participatory Economics

[dogwoodlover]

As described by Michael Albert in his book Parecon. I'm sorry if this is redundant, I didn't dig around much to see if this was already a topic.

I'm just curious as to what the majority of you think about it.

[JazzRemington]

I'm actually writing a crituq of Parecon (including Mutualism). I call it: Capitalism Lite.

[Raúl Duke]

I'm sorry if this is redundant, I didn't dig around much to see if this was already a topic.
You are correct, there was a past thread about this....(hmm...now where is it...?)


I'm actually writing a crituq of Parecon (including Mutualism). I call it: Capitalism Lite.

From what I saw in the other parecon thread and this posts, the views about could range from "its a good idea to experiement and/or mix in with other economic systems/paradigms"...."hmm...sounds interesting"...to "No Way! its just some new form of capitalism (or capitalism: Lite)"

I really don't know much about it so I would be in a middle ground.

In economics I think I'm preferring a syncretic socialist economy (which might feature many ideas like parecon, collectivist, communist, etc) (but maybe it wouldn't have to be syncretic.. .)

The basic premise (I think) is that consumers and producers get some amount or all amount of say and decision making in production (Communists and Anarchists already thought about the part about the workers having the say of production, but the "consumer" part is something new)

This paradigm could probably fit in some "Capitalist Lite" version since imagine if the factories, etc are run like capitalist cooperatives (all the workers get their work's value plus the profit the work makes in equal shares) but, maybe I don't know much, wouldn't the consumers try to minimize the producers profit?

Even so its possible that maybe (since I really haven't read the books) authors meant it to be some kind of "capitalism lite", I think some ideas could still be used for a socialist/communist economy. (In other words, even so the original idea of the entire system of parecon is some kind of "capitlaism lite" doesn't mean that some of the ideas that make part of that system aren't good ideas for a socialist/communist economy;so don't just discard the whole notion completely and instead examine it and take the ideas you think works).

[Raúl Duke]

Parecon (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=57097&hl=Parecon)
Parecon Discussion (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=51503&hl=Parecon)
Parecon, the way.... (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=48539&hl=Parecon)
"parecon" (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=29155&hl=Parecon)
PARECON (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=20990&hl=Parecon)

Here are some links to past threads about parecon in revleft