Seven Oaks Magazine.

“Life After Capitalism,” the phrase catapults the imagination into visions of what a good society might look like. It’s also the title of Michael Albert’s latest book in which he outlines a vision for a ‘participatory economy’. As Noam Chomsky says, Michael Albert’s work “merits close attention, debate and action”. Albert’s book proposes radical transformation, and has far reaching implications. From anti-corporate globalization activists’ rejection of vast disparities in wealth and power, to the World Social Forum movement’s demand that “Another world is possible!”, Parecon (a compound word for ‘participatory economy’) is an important contribution to the broad efforts working to change the world.

Michael Albert is a longtime activist, speaker, and writer. He is coeditor and cofounder of Z Magazine, ZNet and South End Press, all world renowned contributions to diverse Left literature, thought and activism. He has written numerous articles and books, many with Robin Hahnel, professor of political economy at American University in Washington DC, with whom Albert forged the participatory economic vision.

Drawing a thumb nail sketch, Parecon generates a feasible and desirable economic plan that distributes the burdens and benefits of social labor fairly. Participants have decision making input in proportion to the degree they are affected, human and natural resources are used efficiently, providing a variety of outcomes, and human potential, which might otherwise lay dormant, is universally explored.

"Parecon: Life After Capitalism" is born out of numerous efforts. As Albert indicates, it “emerges from many engagements over the years and reflects lessons from actual experience with work life, teaching, organizing, public speaking, dealing with questions in online forums on ZNet, and of course trying to work through the model in new ways as new insights, questions, and explorations arise.”

His previous writings on economics have challenged, head on, the foundations of economic theory, its weaknesses, and spelled out possible ways forward. Of all his writings, two works in particular deserve attention here. In 1991 Albert, with Hahnel, published two complimentary texts simultaneously, “Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty First Century”(South End Press), a comprehensive and detailed outline of their ideas, and second, “The Political Economy of Participatory Economics”(Princeton University Press), a technical application, of the same ideas, aimed at economists. Published in the wake following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, these two books directly challenged determinist declarations of “the triumph of capitalism”, and assertions that we had reached “the end of history”. They cast off the Thatcherite ideology claiming that “there is no alternative”(TINA), and instead of expressing defeat or consent these two books pushed for a vision of a participatory economy. As Albert says, “Parecon: Life After Capitalism” “is my best effort to motivate, describe, elaborate, and defend the vision.”

Though it is a vision of the future, parecon is in the tradition of libertarian Left and popular social movements, of past and present. In his introduction Albert clearly sees a connection between the Paris Commune, Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, and the Australian “Green Bans” of the past. He also points to the similarity of contemporary experimentations with participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Kerala, India. Interested readers should also note that there are a number of self-conscious experiments using parecon principles within the workplace in Winnipeg, Boston and New York. These are only a handful of examples with many more similar instances in co-ops, collectives and worker owned enterprises, around the world. The difference, as Albert notes, is that participatory economics “provides a new economic logic including new institutions with new guiding norms and implications...What parecon can contribute to this heritage and to today’s activism will be revealed, one way or another, in the coming Years.”

The book is peppered with quotes, aphorisms and proverbs, ranging from economists such as Adam Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Keynes and Robinson, to philosophers and dissidents Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Bertrand Russell. You’ll even find insightful descriptions of the “absurdity of consumption under capitalism” by science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin.

By using the values of equity, self-management, diversity, solidarity and efficiency as evaluative criteria, Albert presents a thorough condemnation of capitalism, central planning, market socialism and bio-regionalism. This process is also the initial outline of parecon: Social rather than private ownership, nested worker and consumer councils and balanced job complexes rather than corporate hierarchy, remuneration for effort and sacrifice rather than for property, power, or output, participatory planning rather than markets or central planning, and self-management rather than class rule.

After a detailed outline of allocation, Albert turns to descriptions of “Daily Life in a Participatory Economy”. The purpose is to provide a variety of hypothetical scenarios detailing more specific instances, and providing texture for imagining what life might be like living within a parecon. The fictional “Northstart Press”, is a direct spin on the name of the real book publishing enterprise, “South End Press”, which Albert helped create. He then describes Northstart’s balanced job complexes, workers councils, work weeks, decision making, innovations and participatory planning, all while making condemning contrasts to capitalist publishing houses.

On a somewhat larger scale, the imaginary “John Henry Steel Plant” provides examples of participatory planning and how certain types of disagreements may likely arise, how workers adjust work loads, and the societal costs and consequences, of what the plant produces and uses. In order to demonstrate how parecon is flexible to various work places, Albert explores the daily decision making process involved in the intricate operations of an airport, the “Jesse Owens Airport”. Both individual, and collective consumption are explored in the hypothetical“Emma Goldman community” co-housing unit, and the participatory “Martin Luther King County”. The books final chapter examines possible flaws in parecon while simultaneously demonstrating Albert’s profound understanding of his critics, which again challenges the reader to take a stand on the issue of economic vision, alternatives to capitalism, and parecon in particular.

Overall, Albert provides an exhaustive argument for participatory economy and deserves wide spread attention. The paperback edition is due to hit book stores across North America this month.

Chris Spannos sits on the Board of Directors for Vancouver Co-op Radio, CFRO. He produces radio with the Redeye collective and is a social service worker in Vancouver's down town east side.