Hello , my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z .
While I have been focusing recent episodes on the need to stop Trumpist fascism , I have also emphasized the need to not only address his assaults on constituencies and relations , but also to develop positive aims , partly to motivate involvement and overcome cynicism , partly to generate lasting commitment and partly to avoid having our efforts only get us back to the
status quo pre-Trump , which was itself horrendously flawed and , in any case , led to Trump . In that context , I recently got some email asking about economic allocation , whether there is even anything positive to offer To answer . I admit that I consulted one essay among many that I wrote a few years back on precisely that topic .
I thought I would offer it in this episode , with perhaps some occasional interjections or reactions . I have now to something I offered a couple of years back . Is this a good idea ? Perhaps it isn't . Perhaps I should stay focused on fighting in the here and now . Nonetheless , I take up a larger issue and context this time .
Forewarned , though , the essay I chose to base my answer on is not a tweet . It is a lot longer than that . It starts allocation , determines amounts produced and consumed , it sets budgets and it arrives at prices or valuations . Mainstream economists typically say that for allocation you can only opt for markets and or for central planning .
Participatory socialists view these two anointed options and reply sorry , but both markets and central planning preclude attaining a productive commons . Both impose top-down workplace decision-making . They each enforce a corporate division of labor . They both remunerate horribly inequitably .
And as if all that isn't enough to reject them , markets and central planning also each melt flood . And as if all that isn't enough to reject them , markets and central planning also each melt flood and starve sustainability . So we seek better , not deterred .
Mainstream economists rejoin Okay , in that case you can combine markets and central planning and even put various mitigating constraints on their operations . You can use markets here and use central planning there , in whatever pattern you like . You can legislate policies and restrict what you deem their worst tendencies , but that's all there is .
Riled participatory socialists might scream back use strychnine here and cyanide there . Put a limit on how fast we can kill ourselves with them . No thanks , that's not the post-capitalism we want . And in any event , on what basis do you proclaim ? That's all there is . It's a claim without a supporting argument . It's a claim without supporting evidence .
It's just Thatcher's claim that there is no alternative , targeted on one economic aspect Cooling off . However , we do have to acknowledge that if we don't offer anything positive and we just scream no to current allocation methods , we will convince few who witness our tantrum . So we add to our rant .
Post-capitalist allocation will settle on amounts produced and amounts consumed and on valuations of all products , labor resources and services , but it will do so efficiently , sustainably , without class divisions and in tune with our preferred property , decision-making , workplace and remuneration , values and innovations . What a mouthful Prove . It smirk the mainstream economists .
A lone , relatively brief presentation can only summarize , replies the participatory socialist . But for those who would like to explore further , many books , videos , debates and , in particular , two pretty recent full-length presentations of participatory economics include extensive discussions of participatory planning as well as of participatory economy's other defining features .
My own offering is titled no Bosses A New Economy for a Better World . It is written for anyone interested in post-capitalist possibilities better world it is written for anyone interested in post-capitalist possibilities . Robin Hanel's recent offering is titled Democratic Economic Planning .
It is written for economists and directly addresses their concerns and arguments , emphasizing allocation . Others can read it if they choose , and I urge that people do . I interject , both Hanel and I consider allocation in context of favoring some other key participatory economic features .
They are a productive commons in place of private ownership of productive assets , that all the things that we use to produce stuff should be a common commons . They should be accessible to all and not confined to a set of owners . Second , self-managed workers' councils in place of top-down workplace decision-making .
Self-managed consumers' councils in place of top-down consumption decision-making . That is , we should have ways of arriving at decisions in workplaces and regarding consumption that provide what we call participatory self-management , giving people control over their decisions in proportion as they are affected by them .
Next , jobs balanced for empowerment effects in place of coordinator class monopolization of empowering work .
That is , we want to change the way that work is divided up into jobs so that it isn't the case that a subset of people who do work have all the empowering tasks and circumstances and the rest of those who do work roughly 80% as compared to 20 , have a monopoly on empowering tasks and circumstances , so that the result is a class division between those who are
disempowered and those who are empowered . And finally , income for duration , intensity and onerousness of socially valued labor in place of income for property , power and or output . The idea here is simply that we should get more if we work longer , more if we work harder and more if we work at worse conditions but not for other reasons . That's it .
Given those commitments , we then ask can we employ markets and or central planning to allocate consistently with those other desired features ? If we can't , can we advocate a new participatory mode of allocation able to fulfill these aspirations ? The article continues Economies produce and consume . How much , by whom ? A workplace produces this or that ?
We all consume stuff and services , but how does what workers produce match up with what people consume ? Option one , central planning , has been the allocation choice of many self-titled socialists , but in our view , coordinatorist economies .
Central planning is also , with only modest differences , used within massive production units like Amazon and General Motors to allocate millions of products and hundreds of thousands of workers among many divisions . In central planning , a planning agency collects and assesses information from workers and consumers and proposes inputs and outputs for all economic units .
The units then consider their instructions and either carry them out or register problems they think will arise in trying to carry them out . The central planners assess the predicted problems and issue new instructions if they feel that necessary and the cycle repeats until planners no longer seek new responses In some down-go questions to workplaces .
Up-go answers to planners , down-go instructions , up-go concerns problems . Down-go instructions , up-comes obedience , additional details to make it work . Maintain that fundamental logic . Many advocates of capitalism unrelentingly claim that central planning can't succeed . They say central planning confronts too much information . They say it screws up incentives .
Such criticisms , however , have mostly missed their target . First , during decades of operations , at least according to mainstream economists' criteria , how did Soviet planning score ? Well , to decide , we might compare the Soviet Union to countries with comparable development from its inception , and then over the next five decades Consider , for example , the USSR and Brazil .
The Soviet outcomes were superior in output , development and many other indices . Second , as noted above , huge US firms , in many cases economically larger than small countries , have used central planning to internally allocate their workforces and resources among their units for decades and again , at least by mainstream standards , they have done this rather effectively .
But if central planning can get things produced and distributed which it can then why not use it for our own post-capitalism ? In central planning , workers and consumers ultimately abide instructions that planners generate . A narrow decision-making top commands a wide decision-obeying bottom . There is no self-management More .
Central planners don't want resistance from local units . Central planners are coordinator class . They are the empowered class and want to communicate with others in the coordinator class . This is who they understand , this is who understands them . This is who shares their interests .
For that reason we find familiar corporate hierarchy and centralized , authoritative decision-making in centrally planned economies . Central planning disallows balanced job complexes and self-management . Even if planners are at first honest advocates of workers' power , over time they come to see themselves as more responsible and more important than workers .
They begin to reward themselves and people like themselves more than the workers they command . Why people like themselves ? Because the justification for the planner's higher incomes becomes their greater education , training , skills , connections and decision-making responsibility .
And to be compelling , that justification has to be honored for all who have those credentials , which means not only for those who centrally plan but also for those who are empowered within local units . In other words , the central planners need local agents who will hold workers to norms the central planners decide . Local agents must be locally authoritative .
Their credentials must legitimate them and must reduce other actors to relative obedience . Must legitimate them and must reduce other actors to relative obedience . Central planning thus welcomes coordinator class rule over workers . It compels worker subordination , not only nationally but in each workplace . Coordinators monopolize empowering circumstances .
They dominate agendas and decisions . They aggrandize themselves ostensibly , but not actually , in everyone's interests . Coordinators see workers below as childlike subjects to be ruled and at best , aided . Workers do disempowering tasks . They follow agendas others set , obey orders , others issue and suffer limited incomes .
In short , central planning violates our post-capitalist aims . For that reason , advocates of participatory economics , and nowadays most other anti-capitalists as well , reject central planning . I interject . This critique of central planning is quite widely , though not universally , accepted by anti-capitalists .
I sometimes wonder why , when a person accepts our critique of central planning , they don't accept our critique of markets , which are , I would argue , even worse . At any rate , the article continues . And so what about option two markets ? Many anti-capitalists support , or at least grudgingly accept , markets .
But it turns out that markets also violate our post-capitalist aims . First , markets reward output and bargaining power instead of only duration , intensity and onerousness of socially valued work . With markets you get what you have the bargaining power to take , not what is ethically and socially warranted .
If I have a monopoly on resources , equipment , venues , connections , information or skills , or even on inclination to rule , I have more bargaining power and I get more . Similarly , if I am white or male and society is racist or sexist , I have more bargaining power and I get more . Markets obliterate equitable remuneration . They enforce grotesque income differentials .
Second markets force buyers to try to buy cheap and sellers to try to sell dear . Buyers and sellers seek to fleece one another as much as possible to ensure their own advance . With markets , we get ahead at the expense of others or we get left behind to the benefit of others . We do not cooperatively benefit along with others In market systems .
Being nasty pays , gouging consumers , dumping waste and repressing workers all pay . Markets pressure us to be less than who we should be in order to have more than we should have . Markets generate antisociality . They do not generate solidarity . Nice doesn't pay in market competition .
Markets provide very strong incentives to be egocentric , self-seeking and antisocial Markets provide very strong incentives to be egocentric , self-seeking and antisocial Markets provide very strong disincentives for caring about others and about society , not to mention the planet . Third markets explicitly produce dissatisfaction because only the dissatisfied buy again and again .
For example , planned obsolescence makes the consumer dissatisfied with the product he or she already has . As the General Director of General Motors Research Labs , charles Kettering , who regularly introduced model changes for GM cars put it business needs to create quote a dissatisfied consumer . Its mission is quote a dissatisfied consumer .
Its mission is , quote the organized creation of dissatisfaction . Does anyone not feel this in their own lives ? Does anyone not see it in quote advertising signs that con you into thinking you're the one that can do what's never been done , that can win what's never been won , that can do what's never been done , that can win what's never been won .
Fourth , and of incalculably massive consequence prices . In a market system are best taken into account only the impact of work and consumption on the immediate buyer and seller , but not the impact on those peripherally affected , including , for example , those affected by pollution or , for that matter , by positive side effects .
Only direct buyer and seller enter into the market exchange , not those affected at a distance . This means markets routinely violate ecological sustainability and demolish environmental stewardship . They deal with cars , plastics and everything else in a manner that ignores impact on the environment and on humanity writ large .
As a result , markets subject all but the wealthiest communities to a collective debit in water , air , sound and public availabilities . Markets to spoil ecology and deny life . Markets are a suicide machine . Fifth , and far less often noticed , markets produce decision-making hierarchy , not self-management .
Not only do market-generated disparities in wealth translate into power disparities , but market competition compels even council-based workplaces to cut costs , seek market share and grow sales , regardless of societal and economic harm Though it is a little more subtle to see than other incandescently obvious market failings to stay afloat against market competition .
Even workplaces that initially adopt self-managed councils , equitable remuneration and balanced job complexes have no choice but to increasingly figure out what costs to cut and how to generate more output , each at the expense of worker and even consumer fulfillment .
But who in a self-managed council of workers would want to , would agree to and mostly would be good at cost-cutting and work-intensifying that turns off their own air conditioning , mercilessly speeds up their own work schedules , harshly manipulates consumers and endlessly dumps garbage on neighbors .
It turns out that , to pursue these and other similar competitively imposed antisocial paths sufficiently aggressively , competitive firms will feel pressure to insulate some employees from the discomfort that cost cutting and speed-up imposes and to cause them to feel superior to others , so that such elevated employees will propel competitive cost-cutting , speed-up and dumping at
others' expense , in other words , to cut costs and otherwise impose market discipline . Even if a workplace starts with councils and balanced jobs . Market logic perverts personal motivations and causes a coordinator class to emerge above workers which obliterates self-management and equity and accrues ever more power and income to itself .
That is under the pressure of market competition . Any firm I work for must try to maximize its revenues to keep up with competing firms . If my firm doesn't do that , including dumping costs on others and speeding up work intensity , then it dies . So we must try to dump our costs on others .
We must seek as much revenue as possible , even via inducing excessive consumption . We must cut our costs of production as far as we can , including by reducing comforts for workers while unduly intensifying labor . Forget about workplace daycare , forget about better work conditions , for your own good , say the coordinators to the workers we compete .
Less loudly they think for we coordinators to relentlessly impose all these conditions on the rest of you workers . For market success , we elevated ones , we bosses , have to not suffer the pains our choices induce . We have to come to think we deserve the better outcomes that we enjoy .
We have to come to think you workers deserve the worst outcomes that you suffer . We coordinators look around and think we rule . We get more because we deserve it . It's who we are , you obey , you get less , because that's who you are . Look anywhere , look everywhere , it is life , and life only the Amazon way . It's the American way . It bears repeating .
Consider a firm initially committed to self-management and even to balanced job complexes . If it operates in a market context to compete viciously , market competition will , over time , impose a necessity to hire folks with the kind of callous and calculating minds that modern business schools produce . Suppose you and I work in a firm with others like us .
We are anti-capitalists , we want self-management and equity . Despite these humane desires , market pressures force our firm to compete . We too , ourselves compete in our transactions To compete effectively as a whole workplace . We give new callous , business , school-bred employees , air-conditioned offices and comfortable surroundings .
We then say to them okay , cut our costs to ensure our livelihood .
In other words , even in such hopeful , change-seeking circumstances , markets cause us to impose on ourselves a coordinator class , not due to natural law and not due to some internal psychological drive , but because markets force us to subordinate ourselves to a coordinator lead so that our workplaces don't lose market share and revenues and eventually go out of business .
This flaw of markets , like their more obvious problems , and also like the inbuilt flaws of the corporate division of labor and , for that matter , private ownership of productive assets , institutionally subverts our worthy aspirations .
We can't just jettison private ownership by capitalists , or even just private ownership by capitalists and monopolization of empowering work by coordinators . We must also jettison markets . Some economists will claim that all these market failings are not produced by markets per se , but only by markets that haven't attained a condition of perfect competition .
But this is a bit like saying that the ills associated with ingesting arsenic occur because we never get pure arsenic , but only arsenic tainted with other ingredients . On the one hand , calling for perfect markets ignores that in a real society there is literally no such thing as frictionless competition . So of course we will always get imperfect markets .
On the other hand , and much more important , it ignores that the harmful effects of markets do not diminish when competition is made more perfect . They intensify .
Historically , the closer economies come to a pure market system without state intervention , with as few sectors as possible dominated by single firms or groups of firms and with as few unions as possible , the worse the social implications have been . For example , there have rarely , if ever , been markets as competitive as those of Britain in the early 19th century .
Yet under the sway of those nearly perfect markets . Young children routinely suffered early death , working long days in the middle of the time . The point is well-functioning markets do get various economic tasks done , but they do not promote humane excellence in any form . They do not resist and they even fiercely facilitate material diversity and self-management .
We have to reject private ownership of productive assets , authoritarian decision-making , a corporate division of labor and remuneration for property , power or output , and we also have to reject markets as a tool of allocation . This may seem hard to even imagine , but if we are serious about our aims , we can't escape the conclusion .
We can't sensibly reject exchange per se . We can't sensibly reject allocation per se , but we can and we need to recognize that even without private ownership of means of production .
Markets and central planning each subvert equitable remuneration , they annihilate self-management , they horribly misvalue products , they grossly violate the ecology , they relentlessly impose antisocial motivations and they unavoidably impose class division and class rule . I interject .
The above discussions of central planning and markets are arguments in each case to reject the discussed form of allocation . The claims made are either right or they're wrong . If they are right , they mean we ultimately need a new form of allocation for any economy worth fighting to implement . This is a serious assertion .
If we take it seriously , we have to assess it and , if found true , we have to act on it . It's like rejecting anything else If we reject , we have to come up with a better alternative . The article continues . The point is , particular institutions , in this case markets and central planning , have role attributes that violate our aims .
The same is true for the corporate division of labor and for private ownership of productive assets . The roles of all three violate the values we favor , and that is why we have to figure out how to transcend them all , including how to transcend markets and central planning . All including how to transcend markets and central planning .
To round out a new economic vision , we must therefore conceive a mechanism that can arrive at and efficiently communicate accurate information about the true individual , social and ecological costs and benefits of economic options , give workers and consumers influence over choices proportional to the degree they are affected , promote solidarity , facilitate equity , support balanced
jobs , properly attend to ecology and ensure classlessness , to use economic terminology and more or less quote US military lying self-promotion . We need economic institutions that incentivize and thus produce the best people that people can be . Goodbye inequity and class rule , goodbye markets , goodbye central planning . What else can you show me ?
That's a big question , but one any anti-capitalist needs to answer . Otherwise we will fall back on markets or central planning and they will subvert all else that we seek . So we are back at the question I was asked . That provoked this very temporary step away from addressing how to fight Trump For allocation . Do we have anything positive to offer ?
It follows that , if we take seriously the arguments offered so far , a new approach to allocation has to determine the true personal , social and ecological costs and benefits of economic activities and it has to facilitate workers and consumers using those true measures to settle on inputs and outputs of production and consumption .
But what does the phrase true social costs and benefits even mean ? Suppose we make a car or a violin , what does it cost ? What are its benefits ?
We need to answer these questions because if we don't know the full costs and also benefits of producing the car or violin , and we don't know the full costs and also benefits of producing the car or violin and we don't know the full benefits and also costs of its later consumption , how can those affected decide if it is a good idea to make the car or violin
instead of making something else with the labor , tools , resources and intermediate goods required , for example , instead of making public transportation or more guitars ? Likewise , if we don't know their full costs and benefits , how can we decide if , overall , we want more or fewer cars or violins ?
One thing to note is that allocation should account for implications well beyond what current owners of automobile or violin plants account for . Current owners want to maximize profits while retaining the means to accrue those profits to themselves . Capitalist institutions impose and enforce these motives .
Current owners do not seek societal well-being , workers' well-being or the planet's well-being . Information about all that is not on their agenda . Their notion of efficiency takes no account of benefit or cost to society , workers or the planet . Their position as owners and market competitors means they seek profits or they are replaced .
The only information they care about is what bears on seeking profits . Owners' lives identify with profit-seeking . Owners see assaults on profit-seeking as assaults on their lives . Accounting in a market system tracks charges for inputs , output per hour and revenue from sales , but it ignores worker pleasure and pain and environmental cleanup and degradation .
For a worthy post-capitalism , we should want all actors to pursue solidarity , equity and self-management . We should want economic activity to meet the needs and develop the potentials of workers , consumers and bystanders Consider making cars .
We should want car workers' roles to propel them to account for their own well-being and also consumers , neighbors , societies and ecological well-being , and we should want car workers' circumstances to provide them the information and skills needed to successfully pursue those concerns .
Currently , owners of automobile plants take into account the amount they have to pay to get steel , tires , technologies , housing and electricity and the wages they have to pay and any significant effects on their balance of power and thus on their ability of power and thus on their ability to keep grabbing their preferred giant share of revenues .
Owners pay attention , that is , to what affects their narrow , market-imposed agenda , which is profit or surplus seeking and , short of resisting , current workers lack the opportunity , information , capacity and even legality to pursue anything other than orders delivered and means to obey them .
Transporting and consuming cars , including positive and adverse impacts on workers , consumers , bystanders , communities and the environment .
It follows that what we mean by true social costs and benefits should be an accurate measure of the personal , social and ecological gains and losses associated with the production and consumption of a car or of any other product , including effects on social relations , effects on the material , moral and psychological condition of workers and effects on communities , consumers
and the environment . Worthy allocation should therefore allocate resources , labor and the products of labor in a flexible manner that takes into account all these matters and is also able to realign in case of unexpected crises or shocks . Worthy allocation should not homogenize tastes .
It should abide and even promote diverse preferences , even as it preserves privacy and individuality . Worthy allocation should not pit actors against one another as competing buyers and sellers or class antagonists . It should engender sociality and solidarity . Worthy allocation should operate without class division and class rule .
It should facilitate equity and classlessness as it meets the needs and develops the capacity of all workers and consumers . Worthy allocation should operate without authoritarian or even disproportionate influence for a few people . It should foster self-management for all .
And finally , in deciding what to do with any particular asset , whether it is people's labor or resource like land or oil , or a tool like communications technology , worthy allocation should take into account the true and full personal , social , environmental effects of contending choices . It should attain the ends we seek without wasting means we value .
To simultaneously accord decision-making influence to all who are involved in proportion , as they are affected , is clearly no little ambition , given that virtually everyone is affected to at least some degree by each decision made in an economy , so that in any institution , whether a factory , university , health center or whatever , many interests need to be appropriately
represented in decision-making . There is the workforce itself , obviously affected by their actions each day . Does their work exhaust and deaden or uplift and inspire them ? There is the community in which the workplace is located Is it polluted or is it respected ? And even enriched places located . Is it polluted or is it respected ? And even enriched ?
There are the users of the produced products or services . Do they benefit from what they receive or lose because labor and inputs were not put to a different use that they would have preferred ? For example , if society is making cars instead of public transport , I may gain from having a car , but I may lose more due to the lack of public transport .
If society is making tanks and missiles , I may be told that I am gaining safety and bad guys are being weakened , but I will certainly lose due to gargantuan productive capacity going to war and to waste , murder and destruction instead of to schools , hospitals , housing , parks and infrastructure .
We know that to have self-management of economic life , we have to have new institutions that replace owners out with the old boss , but we also know that we have to have new institutions that ensure that the disproportionate influence and distorted motives that private owners held are not morphed a bit and handed on to a class of coordinators who leave workers still
subordinate . In with the new boss , out with the old , in with the new .
More positively , we know that we need institutions that deliver to each economic actor a degree of influence proportional to the degree that they are affected by such matters as how much in total is produced , how much of any given product is produced , how each product is valued and what income each person gets and therefore how much each person can consume from the
social product . For all these reasons , we not only need self-managed workers and consumers councils . We also need allocation connections between workers and consumers councils that preserve and enhance informed , insightful , self-managed decisions .
And so we have described our post-capitalism allocation task if we are to have allocation , augment rather than subvert equitable remuneration , balanced job complexes and self-management for both workers and consumers . And so we can now ask what actual allocation institutions can accomplish all these aims .
What can we say here in a relatively short essay , relatively by way of getting into this complex issue ? I interject . I have been offering an argument . You have heard it , or maybe read it here , or perhaps even in a more complete presentation in some other offering .
No matter which , well , if you find it wrong , you see an incorrect assumption , or you see a leap of false faith , or you see some illogical assertions , you should dismiss it . Assertions , you should dismiss it .
But if , thinking it over and examining fuller presentations as well , you don't find holes in the claims and consequences offered , if it proves to be logical and well founded , then when assessing what an economy needs for it to be worthy of your advocacy , you have to provide a vision with the indicated qualities and if you can , you then should advocate that .
That was the conclusion Hanel and I reached decades back . I think it still follows and will follow , unless and until someone compellingly rejects the case .
The article continues Suppose , in place of top-down allocation via centrally planned authoritative choices and in place of competitive market allocation by atomized competing buyers and sellers , our economy could arrive at informed , self-managed , cooperatively determined inputs and outputs by way of socially interconnected actors .
And suppose , for each of these interconnected actors , we could opt for them to have influence over decisions in proportion as choices affect them .
And suppose we could arrange that they each receive accurate , full social and environmental costs and benefits to assess and that they each receive appropriate training , confidence , current conditions and current motivations to accurately develop , communicate and express their preferences .
I hope we can agree that if we can conceive institutions able to make all that real , we would have worthy allocation . I interject , this is a little like saying suppose singing John Lennon's Imagine for five minutes daily would end war , hunger and so on for everyone . I hope we can agree that if that was so , we should urge people to sing it .
Okay , that isn't so , but if it was , then we should . So the analogous claim is in the case of proposing a new approach to allocation . If a proposal has the indicated properties and if it has no serious offsetting flaws , then every anti-capitalist should advocate seeking to implement the new approach to allocation .
So the merit or not of the claims is something to decide , isn't it ? The article continues in participatory planning , if it is all we hope for it to be . Worker and consumer councils will freely propose their work activities and consumption preferences in light of continually updated knowledge of the personal , local , national and ecological implications of their choices .
But what might that look like ? Workers and consumers , via their councils , cooperatively propose workplace and consumer inputs and outputs . They initially arrive at proposals that reflect their preferences in their own councils . They receive accountings of others' proposals arrived at in other councils accountings of others' proposals arrived at in other councils .
They engage in back-and-forth process where in each new round they use others' proposals and what we call indicative prices to refine their own proposals . In each round , that is , they receive new information to use to refine their proposals for their own production or consumption .
To facilitate this , they use participatory planning's additional features , whose details continually evolve , based on experiences of what best helps people express and refine their desires in light of feedback about other people's desires . In my workers' council , I propose we should do such and such . You are in the same council and you propose we should do so-and-so .
Our workers' council collectively settles on an overarching proposal indicating what we collectively wish to produce . Consumers and other producers do essentially the same thing . We and everyone then learn what other councils have proposed .
Then they and we alter and resubmit our proposals in light of the new information both quantitative prices and , when useful , qualitative reasons that we have received .
We then operate in light of our need to balance a personally fulfilling and socially responsible pattern of our work light of our need to balance a personally fulfilling and socially responsible pattern of our work and of our consumption with the requirements of a viable overall plan .
Each participant in this process , both as a worker and as a consumer , seeks personal and also collective council well-being and development .
However , because of a whole array of associated institutions and especially because of equitable remuneration and balanced job complexes , each participant can improve his or her situation only by acting in accord with , or at least not violating , more general social benefit . I gain by improvements in social output . Everybody else gains from that as well .
I gain by improvements in the quality and circumstances of what constitutes balanced work . Everybody else gains from that as well .
I can also work somewhat longer or less long myself , for example , depending on my preference for leisure or for income and agreed to by my workmates , and when my work is socially valued , which it has to be to be remunerated , my pursuing that choice wouldn't hurt anyone else .
When workers and consumers express their individual and collective preferences and hear back the sums and averages of proposals from all others across the economy , as well as receive updated estimates of what will wind up , relative valuations or prices of everything the user want , as well as access to qualitative information when it is desired .
The new information leads them to make new proposals and a sequence of cooperatively updated refinements until settling on a plan .
As in any economy , for consumers to propose what they want for their share of the social product , they must take into account their expected income , which , in our post-capitalism , is proportional to the duration , intensity and onerousness of their socially valued labor , and they must also take into account the expected relative costs of available products , as conveyed by
the participatory planning process . This occurs for individuals deciding personal consumption , and also for households , communes , neighborhoods and regions deciding collective consumption . And all this is carried out through consumer councils whose proposals , taken together , sum to the cumulative demand for society's final consumer goods and services .
Workers and their workplace councils similarly indicate how much work they wish to do , in what patterns , in light of overall requests for their product , as well as in light of their own labor , leisure preferences and their responsibility to use productive assets responsibly . The proposals of workers in each firm sum to industry and societal proposed output .
While workplace proposals are collective for the whole workplace , they are arrived at with input from each individual in the workplace , both proposed supply from workers and proposed demand by consumers , who are largely the same people in different roles , are refined each in light of the other and in light of the continually refined evaluations , or what's called indicative
prices , during the multi-round planning process , the trajectory of revisions finally establishes true social and ecological costs and benefits . In a participatory economy .
It is important to note that no one would have any interest in or means to sell products at inflated prices or sell more items than consumers actually need , because imposing high prices and inducing purchases beyond what will fulfill people will not increase anyone's personal well-being or income .
Income depends instead on duration , intensity and onerousness of socially valued , not unwanted , wasteful or unproductive labor , and not on output or revenues and not on output or revenues , that is .
Even if a workforce in some workplace could somehow finagle some false inflated price for what it was selling or could somehow use some sort of manipulative technique to trick consumers into buying more than they could really benefit from , the income of each of its workers would not thereby climb , since one's income doesn't depend on overall volume or value of sales .
On the other hand , producing too little or too poorly or wastefully for the work to all be socially valuable , given the labor and resources involved , would diminish each worker's income . There is therefore reason to meet needs and to utilize and develop potentials , but not to do other than that .
Why would I want to produce something , applying my time and energy , that wasn't actually going to benefit folks ? I wouldn't not in a participatory , economic , institutional setting where there is nothing gained , only losses , from such behavior . Nor is there any need for firms to compete for market share .
Individuals and units do not advance by way of beating out others in such a manner . Rather , economic motives would simply be to meet needs and to develop potentials at whatever level turns out to be preferred in light of all costs and benefits , without wasting assets .
Workers would seek to produce what is socially valuable and useful , while compatibly and cooperatively fulfilling their own as well as the rest of society's preferences . And this would be true not because workers are suddenly saints , but because , with sensible institutions , cooperation would benefit everyone and waste would harm everyone .
Merciless fleecing , indeed fleecing of any degree , would have no place in the participatory economy , because there is neither means to do it nor gains to be had from doing it .
Even theft would make little material sense , because if you stole to any significant degree , you would have to enjoy it in your basement , since , with equitable incomes , no one could ostentatiously consume other than due to theft .
So ostentatiously consuming would broadcast that you were a thief , for example , and revealing a bit more of the character of our preferred institutions . Suppose you're a Roger Federer , a famous and really , really excellent tennis player . Society likes watching high-quality tennis and you like playing , so you are on the pro tour .
You have a balanced job complex of course , since everyone who works does , and you get income for the duration , intensity and onerousness of your socially valued work , like everyone . So your income is perhaps average for society , or maybe it is somewhat more or less , depending on your preference for more income or more leisure .
But wait , you are so good at tennis that a lot of people would love to play a set or two with you . You could give lessons , of course , remunerated equitably , legitimately , but given your incredible talent , you want to earn lots more . So you decide to augment your income by selling play dates to people on the sly at a very , very high price per hour .
Can you do that , and will you in fact want to ? Well , to do it , you would have to violate the norms of work by operating outside the purview of councils .
You would , depending on some details likely also have to get your payment in kind , meaning the people wanting to play with you can't give you cash but have to give you stuff that they have gotten for their income . And there is another , more interesting obstacle , that is , suppose you do it and suppose you get tons of stuff . What do you do with your bounty ?
You can't enjoy it in public because there's no legitimate way to have accumulated so much stuff in current economies . People who rip off can live ostentatiously without real difficulty In an equitable society .
You would have to enjoy your bounty in your cellar , because to enjoy it in public would immediately reveal that you have gotten it by violating norms , since there is no legitimate way to get such excessive income . And there is even more . Where do you get all the tennis balls you need and the courts to play on ?
The tennis councils are not going to allot it for antisocial behavior . Without belaboring unduly beyond the bare outline of key features that we have been presenting , the example offers a brief look into a particular , unexpected implication of participatory planning and participatory economic operations , and there are many more such positive implications .
But let's get back to the characteristics of our hoped-for participatory planning . Workers and consumers , separately and collectively utilize various communicative mechanisms developed for the purpose to communicate their proposals for desired production and consumption . Cooperative refinement of their proposals into a shared overall plan in turn occurs via a series of planning rounds .
Every individual and collective is responsible for making their own proposals . In doing so , each participant has an interest in effectively utilizing productive potentials to meet needs , because everyone gets an equitable share of the overall social output . I interject I know this is a lot to grasp , a whole hell of a lot to grasp .
It's a lot even to listen to , but maybe it deserves your time and effort . If we want to transcend capitalism , we have to acknowledge that figuring what we want in its place will take some effort and that it will be necessary if we are to wind up where we wish to go and , for that matter , if we are to have sufficient motivation for the journey .
The article continues Imagine a population . It produces what we call the social product .
Each person can get what turns out to be an average share of that product , say , or can arrange to work longer or harder or under worse conditions due to wanting a little more income , even at the cost of the extra effort , or , conversely , could arrange to work a little less long or less hard or at better conditions due to wanting to exert a bit less , even
at the cost of receiving a little less income . A key observation is that the effort we contribute and the associated income we get are connected for everyone . They together impact our economic well-being . They determine the combined benefit and cost to us of what we do and what we receive , with that sum being effectively the same for everyone .
This hypothetical population is exactly the population of our revolutionized economy , is exactly the population of our revolutionized economy . Every participant would have an interest in effectively utilizing productive potentials to meet needs because everyone would get an equitable share of the overall social output .
When the total rises , my piece of the total rises , as does everyone else's . Each person would also favor workplaces and all of society making investments that reduce drudge work and then improve the quality of society's average balanced job complex , because that is the job quality that everyone on average enjoys . The logic is the same as for income .
Our interests entwine . We all want society's balanced job complex to be desirable and to grow steadily more desirable , because we all do our economic activity in a balanced job complex . We have suggested that participatory allocation continually updates and refines plans for economic production and consumption .
During the course of each year , tastes change , crises arise , innovations occur .
Of course , that doesn't say there would be no errors or imperfections in the day-to-day and year-to-year outcomes of participatory economy , but it does say that , with continual updates and with shared , equitable circumstances , such deviations from ideal choices would arise from ignorance or mistakes , but not from the system's logic .
Such deviations would not snowball into permanent inequities . Participatory planning won't propel accumulation and won't push for constant increases in effort , as does market allocation , it won't bias against public goods , won't under-assess the importance of ecological impacts and won't ignore the personal and social costs of economic choices .
As does market allocation , the system won't divide actors into a class of dominant coordinators and a class of subordinate workers with opposed interests , as do markets and central planning .
With participatory allocation of the sort we are discussing albeit we have here discussed it in only a very cursory way assume , for the sake of discussion and for now , that divisions' features can be filled out so that in no way could one sector systematically benefit at the cost of other sectors , not by race , gender or class .
To gain at the expense of others goes from being the aim of economic action to being a virtual impossibility for economic action . Everyone is treated according to the same norms , which privilege none above others . Treated according to the same norms which privilege none above others .
Mistaken choices and deviations don't snowball in a manner that continually benefits some in a ruling class or a privileged community , for example , to the detriment of others In another aspect of allocation , to choose what role and position to occupy in a participatory workplace , each person would consult his or her own personal tastes and talents .
Of course , each person would be better suited and more likely to be happy at some pursuits than at others . Maybe I am more technical , you are more verbal . I like indoors , you like outdoors . I prefer to calculate or construct , you prefer to design or cook . Each person's job search would be about meeting personal preferences equitably .
No choice that one could individually make or that a group could collectively make would accrue what other members of society would deem unjust power , wealth or circumstance . I interject . I have painted a very pretty picture , to be sure , but my comments here are only a succinct presentation .
So I repeat for those who would like to explore further , there are books , videos , debates and especially two recent full-length presentations of participatory economics , which include extensive discussion of participatory planning , as well as of participatory economy's other defining features . My offering is titled no Bosses A New Economy for a Better World .
It is written for anyone interested in post-capitalist possibilities . Robin Hanell's offering is titled Democratic Economic Planning . It is written for economists and non-economists who are driven to comprehend more and directly addresses their concerns and arguments . The article continues .
The bottom line is this participatory institutions propel us to frequently be whoever we wish to be consistent with everyone else doing so as well . My well-being becomes a condition of your well-being . Your well-being becomes a condition for mine . That is the essence of participatory economics and participatory society .
Do we want that , or do we want poverty and hardship for most , gilded cages for some and a slipslide to moral and ecological oblivion for everyone ? That was the end of the article . Why did I write it ? Why did I do this episode and other episodes I have done earlier regarding property , division of labor and other features ?
Not to earn income , not to fulfill some kind of contract , not even to feel good .
I wrote this some time back and I presented it anew for this episode , like I have written many , many other articles and a bunch of books hoping to elicit either reasoned rejection that would provoke new explorations to find better post-capitalist vision , or to provoke reasoned support so that people wishing to transcend capitalism would escape the false claims of markets
or central planning and of private ownership , corporate divisions of labor , top-down decision-making , inequitable remuneration and class division , and instead advocate their opposite . Truth be told . As you know , that hasn't yet happened , not even on what we call the left . Why not ?
One explanation is that I and others who favor participatory economics have just wasted your time and that we have done so repeatedly with every visionary podcast , article , interview , talk and book we have offered for nearly 50 years .
Maybe it has all been undertaken for a flawed vision that is either unimplementable or , if one would be saddled with harmful and even devastating consequences . Okay , I don't think either is the case , but I certainly have to acknowledge that they might be .
But if the vision is flawed , is it too much to ask for someone to provide a compelling explanation why participatory planning and participatory economics are unimplementable , saddled with harmful and even devastating consequences , or unattainable ?
What is it about people , or about the planet , or about the features of the proposed institutions that , in that case , would render the vision unsatisfactory ? On the other hand , if there is no such compelling case offered .
Is it too much to ask that people would continue to investigate to decide if this mode of allocation , and the whole participatory economic vision for that matter , are viable and worthy ? After all , what we now have capitalism a great many and a growing number of us agree is paving a path toward barbarism or suicide .
Finally , if the vision is viable and is worthy , is it too much to ask what the people advocate for it ? Yes , I know , at a time when a good many people can't seem to advocate even for planetary survival or , say , for stopping fascism , maybe it is too much to ask that we share a positive vision .
Maybe that level of rationality and commitment is beyond our immediate operational , psychological , emotional range , at least for now . But I hope not and I think not . And likewise , I know , at a time when hell is threatening in the form of right-wing thugs seizing governments and reconstructing them , as in the US with the gutless , amoral , greedy Trump and co .
So the rightful , highest priority is to stop them . And the understandable , greatest galvanizing observations and desires are about current society as it now suffers and not about future , transformed society as it should and can be .
Talking about what we ultimately want can seem out of touch , but I think not , and I hope not , because stopping fascism now will at least be aided by , and may even literally require , at least some shared clarity about where we want to arrive later . And all that said , this is Michael Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z .