Hi All;

I apologize if these postings are already known or answered or
commented on and I've missed this, but here's the last reply from
M. Albert;

"Ideology Over Reality
By Michael Albert at Jun 7, 2008

This is the final piece, at least for now, in the debate about parecon
that is largely contained in my immediately prior post.

I have to admit that the experience of interacting with leftists
wedded to particular ideologies is, every time, a daunting one, even
for a leftist who is also quite strongly attached to a particular set
of views, such as myself.

For people trying to change the world, holding some shared concepts,
goals, etc., is essential and not per se a problem. But beyond holding
shared views, when encountering views contradicting ours perhaps we
can agree that our attitude ought to be:

1. first, we want to seriously understand those different views on
their own terms
2. second, we want to see how those different views are contrary to
the ones we hold
3. third, we want to see if the different views are better in some
ways, rather than reflexively rejecting them with a stored up barrage
of rhetoric born of entirely different circumstances, and then,
4. fourth, if we do find that the different views embody
improvements, we should happily adopt them, since the goal is not to
be right, but to attain a better world, and better ideas mean more
likelihood of doing so. And finally,
5. fifth, if we decide the different views are instead flawed, we
should try to explain why they are based on evidence and logic, not
simply repeating that we believe differently.


Now I suspect that the editors and/or reviewer engaging with me in
this exchange think the above has been, in fact, their approach to the
different ideas found in the book Parecon...but I would have to say
otherwise, that they instead didn't take it even a little seriously,
didn't try to understand what was being said, didn't ever even
contemplate the possibility that it has valuable insights, and didn't
try to actually explain, since they thought it was the case, why its
specific views and proposals were flawed.

Readers will have to judge, I guess, remembering that the topic is
parecon...as presented in the book, Parecon, and as begun in the
original review.

In any case, here is my reply to the last editors comment...



===

The editors start their final reply in the debate, the last entry in
the prior post, with what I guess they think is their knockout blow
for parecon: "It is only under capitalism that the social surplus
takes the form of a monetary surplus value and, as you admit, this is
what will exist in parecon."

My reaction is that they are knocking themselves out, not parecon.

Why is anything true only under capitalism, and no where else, one
wonders - is it because that is rule written somewhere? And what is it
that I admit, in any case - we have to wonder.

The editors have a set of concepts - value, surplus value, prices, and
apparently money, among others. More, they have a set of expected
relations among the real world referents of those concepts that they
take for granted will exist in every conceivable system other than,
perhaps, a very vague one that they favor, identifiable mainly by
their favoring it. In my reading of their words, at least, they simply
don't seem to be able to see anything other than what they already
believe, and they make what at least seems to me to be no discernible
effort to do so.

I am sorry that this is harsh, but I should be honest about my take,
even at the risk of offending. In short, it is hard for me to
understand how someone highly trained in left thought, editors of a
Socialist periodical, could read Parecon, or even just this exchange,
and then say what they do, other than if they are functioning rather
reflexively and routinely and repeatedly imposing on my words meanings
that not only aren't there, but are explicitly denied.

It isn't, of course, that I don't think anyone could sensibly dislike
the book or disagree with the model, etc. It is that I think the
editors are doing these things without more than superficial reference
to what is being said in the book or the model, but instead only in
accord with doctrine that is already in their heads.

Again, I am sorry for being harsh, but...well, let's see. (By the way,
I have no problem continuing this in the pages of their periodical, as
well as here on ZCom, if they wish to.)

When the editors say "monetary surplus value," well, okay, what is in
their minds? I admit that I am not entirely sure because this is the
kind of technical phrase (to be kind) or obscurantist jargon (to be
not so kind) that people use, though in this case I think it may be a
bit idiosyncratic, each user molding it in accord with their other
views, so that communication becomes quite difficult, like talking
with Humpty Dumpty, I think it was, in Lewis Carroll's parable,
changing meanings as he wishes.

I think, judging from context, that most likely "monetary surplus
value" they have in mind a sum of money, or what that is the same
thing - claims on social output, also called income - that is going to
someone at the expense of someone else - thereby being exploitative.

Why this could only occur under capitalism, or put differently, why
any system it occurs in is for that reason usefully called capitalism,
isn't explained. If a system has exploitation in this broad sense, but
has no private ownership and no markets, for the editors it is
capitalist. For me, this is humpty dumpty word play with a vengeance,
but it isn't germane to parecon which doesn't have this kind of
exploitation, and it arises again below, anyhow...

So what is germane regarding economic surpluses and parecon? A parecon
firm produces. I covers its costs (hopefully all of them, costs of
production and byproduct costs, etc.). The value of the outputs exceed
the value of costs. That surplus is converted, I assume the editors
are thinking, into cash (income, claims on consumption) and then goes
to someone - and here is the crucial part - at the expense of someone
else.

Okay, if that last part were true, that would certainly be bad, I
agree with the editors about that. Saying that if it were true it
would imply the economy is capitalist I however find ludicrous. It
makes the word capitalist and the word exploitative synonymous so that
feudalism suddenly is capitalist, so is pharaonic Egypt, so is the
"socialist" Soviet Union, etc. Still, if the benefits of production
were going to people based on owning the means of production of the
workplace, then it would rightfully be called profits, in the Marxist
terminology and in the mainstream too, and that would be bad. If the
benefits were going to people based on their having more bargaining
power and being able to grab it away from others, then that too would
be bad, I agree, though it would not be profits in the sense any
marxist or other economists use the term. Rather, the second kind of
exploitative allocation occurs in many economic systems, but perhaps
most important it occurs in what has been called socialism heretofore
- both market and centrally planned. And it is still bad, yes.

However, parecon doesn't have either of those bad results. So far from
admitting what I think the editors have in mind, I explicitly say it
is false, the book's presentation says it is false, and the above
replies say it is false, and at least in the longer formulations, it
isn't just said but demonstrated. Thus, people get income for how long
they work, how hard they work, and the onerousness of the conditions
under which they work. They do not, and even cannot, in a parecon, get
more than that - not due to property relations, not due to bargaining
power - it is even quite hard to do it by theft.

So why do the editors say I agree with them in their portrayal of
parecon embodying exploitation? I think they deduce parecon must be
exploitative because because parecon tracks relative values (prices)
and has income shares as well. I say it is not exploitative because in
parecon the income you get is for how long, how hard, and the
onerousness of the conditions under which you do useful work, which is
equitable remuneration, and has nothing to do with property ownership
or bargaining power. They say prices and income based on what you do
means exploitation. I say that is utter nonsense... You judge who is
right. But, regardless of who is right, you might wonder, how can the
editors possibly interpret my words as saying I agree. Well, my guess
is that this is how.

I say that pareconist firms produce more value than the sum of all
associated costs. I say that in parecon there are prices and income,
as well, thus in some sense money, or exchange values, and there is a
way to track our rightful claims on social product via budgets based
on income. The editors in turn KNOW, however, without even looking and
because their concepts tell them so (and of course in my view
wrongly), that if firms produce more value than the associated costs,
and if there is income in any way correlated to work, and there are
relative prices, and there tracking of all that, and budgets, even if
all these things are very different than in other systems, then the
surplus will inevitably become what they call "monetary surplus" by
which they mean to imply, I think, a surplus accruing to some instead
of others. This claim, that x implies y, is never remotely explained
but is, instead, an axiom or unchallengeable belief. It simply must be
true. The editors don't have to think about it, or look closely at
parecon, for that matter. They KNOW x implies y for all possible
visions that might be offered. So why look closely? All they have to
do is look at my words and find that there are prices and income and
then that's the end of it, they at most only feel a need to make the
claim they know is true that connects those features to exploitation.

First, it is important to see how peculiar what they are saying is. Of
course anyone sane wants workplaces to produce items and services and
other outcomes that are more socially valued than all that is used up
in that production or otherwise incurred as costs, whether material,
personal, social, or ecological. So we want all want there to be
economic surplus, in that sense. The editors must, too.

The editors now add, however, that if we have surplus,a good thing,
but we also have prices and income that is in any way correlated to
people's activities, then we will inevitably have exploitation. No
need to demonstrate exploitation, to say who gets more and who gets
less than they ought to since we simply know exploitation must be there.

Now, if we do take that leap, they argue, then if we want to avoid
exploitation we must forego prices, income in the sense of earned
rights to a share of the social output, and anything remotely
resembling money. When I tell them that this means they have not only
jettisoned prices, income, etc., but they have done away with all
possibility of sensible allocation because they have no way to decide
between options based on valuations, they simply ignore it. When I
tell them they have also done away with all possibility of attaining
just distribution because, again, there is no way to say to a
consumer, or for a consumer to even know that some amount is more (or
less) than he or she should have, or to say to a worker, or for a
worker to even know, some level of work is more (or less) than you
should be doing - the editors think they don't need to answer. They
feel it is compelling to just repeat without reference to what parecon
actually embodies, their doctrine - surplus plus income plus prices
means exploitation. Then, since they in my view quite rightly want an
end to any kind of elites accruing disproportionate wealth by property
or power or any other means, and since they KNOW (wrongly) that if
there is a surplus, which of course there needs to be, and if there is
also money, prices, budgets, etc., then there will be exploitation -
they deduce there simply must not be money, prices, budgets, etc.

It is important to add that this reasoning is not nonsensical in the
abstract. For example, I am following a somewhat similar pattern, I
believe quite reasonably, when I say I want classlessness and see
where that leads me. That is, I believe, based on a whole set of
evidence and logic carefully presented in plain language, that private
ownership and also the familiar corporate division of labor in which
about 20% of producers monopolize virtually all empowering tasks (as
well as markets and central planning) all singly and together
inevitably produce class division and class rule. Proceeding on that
belief, I then deduce that to have classlessness we must reject these
other features - supposing that we can do so and still have a viable
and worthy economy, that is. Then I try to carefully show how we can
accomplish that, with balanced job complexes, participatory planning, etc.

The editors and I are both claiming that feature x (we are pointing to
different features, of course) obstructs outcomes that we want. To get
the outcomes, then, we each deduce that we must therefore do away with
feature x. X for me is markets, central planning, corporate divisions
of labor, top down decision making, private ownership of means of
production, and remuneration for property, power, or output. X for the
editors is private ownership and, well, money and perhaps even
relative prices, and perhaps other things too. We both find some
features objectionable, inevitably, and we both say that therefore to
have a good economy we must conceive it without those features.

Here is a difference, however. I work very hard to make a compelling
case by examining their properties and dynamics that the x that I
reject - private ownership of means of production, the monopolization
of empowering tasks in few hands, remuneration for property, power, or
output, authoritarian decision making, and allocation by markets or
central planning, each produce class division and class rule. The book
they reviewed does that, for example. And I very carefully present an
alternative way of organizing economics that doesn't have those
features and then also carefully make a case that that new type of
economic arrangement, with new defining features, can get economic
functions achieved in ways we desire, rather than avoiding some ills
while generating new ones in their place. The editors, I think, in
contrast, don't make a connection between pricing and income per se
and exploitation or class difference. They simply assert it/ Likewise,
they don't offer a serious set of institutions without those features
and show their viability - though perhaps somewhere else they do and I
am just unaware of it - though I very much doubt it. They debate based
on doctrine, not on reason and evidence. They reject a new model
without even bothering to examine it, or so it seems to me.

There was a famous exchange that is purported to have occured in a
restaurant between an exceptional economist, Joan Robinson, and some
table mates whose names I don't know, decades back. One table mate
said to Robinson (who was one of the more knowledgeable people in
marxist economics in the world) how come you aren't a Marxist. And
Robinson replied, well, the difference is that if you ask a Marxist
some question about wages and prices, for example, he or she will
think for a moment and then say, oh yes, okay, well on page xxx of
volume two of Capital it says.... In contrast, Robinson added, if you
ask me the same question, even if I would in some case happen to have
essentially the same substance for my answer, I would pull out a
napkin and work it out, rather than simply quoting as if from a bible.
(I admit, I added some words to what I remember of this). It is a very
instructive story, I think even if the doctrinal approach isn't always
so utterly obvious as when quoting sources in place of offering
evidence and logic.

Okay, so if what the editors KNOW to be true - that having prices,
budgets, etc., implies exploitation - is in fact not true, or if I
claim it isn't true, then what do I think is the case regarding the
main issues at hand and parecon?

In a firm in parecon it is quite true, as the editors notice, or one
hopes it is true, at any rate, that the firm produces a volume of
outputs whose worth to society is greater than all the incurred
resource, labor, environmental, and social costs as well. Okay, so
let's say the food plant, or bicycle plant, or whatever else, succeeds
in that respect. Now what?

Well, that doesn't inexorably mean that some group thereby unjustly
accrues the greater income, whether by virtue of owning the factory -
or by virtue of having great bargaining power due to their situation
in the economy which lets them take more. The ownership is eliminated
in parecon. So too are the differentials in economic circumstance that
convey different bargaining power. So too, in any case, is even the
possibility of remuneration in accord with power.

Yes, the items and services in the economy have prices in a parecon -
exchange values - though those prices emerge from self managed
cooperative negotiation of inputs and outputs, which, oddly, I
suspect, is exactly what the editors want, they just don't want it to
include, as information, relative valuations. And yes, people have
incomes, or said differently, have budgets, which limit how much of
the social product they are entitled to. And yes, allocation decisions
about what to produce using resources and labor, etc. and about who
winds up producing it or getting it, use valuations and are impacted
by budgets. Not only does all this happen in a parecon, but more, I
claim if it didn't the system would be utterly incapable of
functioning intelligently, or even at all, much less functioning
equitably and with self management. That ought to be trivially
apparent. You can't make sound judgements about producing one item
instead of some other, or vice versa, without knowing how much cost
and benefit the item and its production involve - relative valuations.
In any case, But, that an economy has prices, budgets, etc., which are
both essential and desirable if done consistent with other
aspirations, does not imply, and I have seen zero words designed to
show that it implies, that there is exploitation, much less who
benefits, or how much. I should perhaps add that it is incredible to
me, I admit, that someone would be discussing parecon, focusing on
exploitation, and never once discuss parecon's norm of
remuneration...but, given that the argument is from doctrine, not
based on the actual model, I suppose it is predictable.

There is another side to the coin, however, and to the editors'
objection as well. Let's say, instead of the situation of surplus
discussed above, that the bicycle or food workplace produces output
that is less valuable than the costs associated with production. The
editors seem to think that paying attention to this is tantamount to
operating according to profit and not peoples needs and desires. In
fact, the actual situation is the opposite.

Consider the firm that has no surplus of benefits over costs. What do
we do about it? Well, if society is rational, and if it is operating
in accord with needs and not profits, it will be desirable for there
to be changes so the workplace does a better job of creating the
outputs without incurring so many costs. Or, if that doesn't occur and
people don't want the bicycles or food coming out of these particular
workplaces more than they want well being for the workers there, or
sustainability for the neighborhoods, or other products (including
food or bicycles made differently in other firms with less costs) the
firm should no longer produce. It is not serving needs but instead
diminishing fulfillment relative to better choices.

And here is an irony - but one the editors should, and would, I think,
immediately understand if they were using a napkin to work things out
instead of using doctrine to claim things. What occurs in capitalism,
in this case of not producing more value in outputs than the costs
incurred? Well, sometimes the firm will shut down - as it ought to if
it can't be refitted - but other times it won't. For example, if the
firm is generating big profits for owners because lots of the costs
are going unpaid by the owners but instead hitting others than the
owners - being paid through taxpayer funds, say, or just going
unaddressed as in ecological impacts, so, think, for example, of
idiotic products that destroy the environment but don't include those
costs in the prices - or of weapons manufacture - then the production
will continue. Ironically, in other words, the situation is opposite,
in this case, on all counts, to what the editors' doctrine proposes.
Paying attention to full social costs and benefits and closing down
operations that don't generate surpluses is the thing to do to abide
need of all concerned, if done in a pareconish way, while keeping
such a firm open (in some cases) is the thing to do and that will be
done, to abide the will of capitalist owners.

The editors write to me in their reply: "The institutional changes you
advocate (no legal individual ownership of means of production,
self-management, etc.) are inadequate reasons for claiming that
capitalism has been overthrown."

How to begin. Well, if what they present was the actual list of
changes that I advocated, the editors would be part right. In that
(fictitious) case, what I was proposing could then be, for example,
market socialism or centrally planned socialism - both of which are
still exploitative and class divided, though calling them capitalist
is ridiculously misleading. But in fact what they offer isn't the list
of changes I advocate, and I think most interestingly, the editors
feel no need, it seems, to acknowledge or probably even to notice that
it isn't the list of changes I advocate.

Instead, the list I advocate, put negatively or simply in ethical
terms, as they did (not least, I think, because they have no positive
institutional proposals) includes no private ownership of productive
assets (not just some formal law but none), no markets, no central
planning, no remuneration for property, power, or output, no top down
decision making, and no corporate division of labor (that allots
empowering tasks overwhelmingly to about 20% of the workforce who I
call the coordinator class and who easily dominate the economy and
exploit, and allots rote and repetitive and otherwise disempowering
tasks overwhelmingly to 80% of the workforce, who I call the working
class, and who are for want of information, credentials, access, and
skills and knowledge, dominated and exploited. In ethical terms the
list is self management, equitable remuneration, diversity,
solidarity, and efficiency in meeting needs and developing potentials
of both workers and consumers. And finally, the list, put positively
in institutional terms, since parecon isn't just a list of things
rejected or ethical aims, but is an actual vision - includes, workers
and consumers self managing councils, remuneration for duration,
intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor, balanced job
complexes, and participatory planning.

Now, to say, as the editors do, that an economy which has replaced the
way work is organized with a classless approach, the way decisions are
made with a self managing approach, the way consumption occurs with an
unalienated approach, the way allocation is accomplished with a
cooperative, negotiated approach, and the way people earn and utilize
income with an equitable approach is, nonetheless, still capitalist,
because it has something they call monetarized surplus, is quite
something, but, I think, actually explicable, in an odd way that we
will see in a second.

The editors say, "We agree that the former Soviet Union did have a
ruling class, but not that there were no markets there. Even the
regime's ideologists admitted that there was `commodity-production,'
i.e. production for sale, and that buying and selling relationships
existed between state enterprises. While there was no individual legal
ownership of the main means of production (though there was of some
things: dachas, works of art, state bonds, bank accounts), these means
of production were not owned by society as a whole but effectively by
a class which monopolised them, via the state, and which lived a
privileged life from the surplus value extracted from the wage-labour
of the workers. That is why we think the best description of that and
similar societies was state capitalist."

The Soviet allocation system was central planning. Markets did not set
prices and existed far far less, for example, than planning exists in
the U.S., which I bet the authors would call a market economy, quite
reasonably. But we could have been talking about Yugoslavia, and then,
indeed, there would have been markets, which is why it was called
market socialism. Intoning the phrase "commodity production" brings us
back to the humpty dumpty dynamic. What does it mean?

Do the editors have in mind that things produced are consumed? Well
then there would always be that feature and there would be nothing bad
about it. Do they have in mind that the consumption occurs limited by
budgets? Again, that will always be true and there is nothing wrong
with that. What it means technically, and this may be what they intend
to connote in using it, is that the production occurs driven by profit
motives with the profit accruing to owners, who have overwhelming
power, etc. But all this was absent in the Soviet and Yugoslav cases.

People own dachas? Yes. And they owned the shirts they wore too. So?
Saying there should be no private onwership of productive assets
doesn't imply there is no ownership of anything. This was not the key
problem with the Soviet or Yugoslav economies. If bank accounts
conveyed interest based on profits earned by firms, that would be a
real thing to point to, but swamped by everything else. However, yes,
there was a ruling class - but it was an economic phenomenon - footed
in, and here is the key economic problem with these economies, the
existence of a class monopolizing empowering tasks and thus dominating
workers below. (Was there a statist political aspect? Yes, but even if
there had been a multi party democracy, the economy would sitll have
been class ruled not classless.) Did the ruling class live much better
than working people due to taking an exploitative share of the social
product. Yes, that is quite true. But that was also true under
feudalism, should we call that capitalism, too? Perhaps royal
capitalism? Humpty can choose to use the words whatever way he wishes,
but then if we actually want to communicate usefully, we just need
more words.

Here is the crux. The editors want to reject the Soviet system (I hope
for good reasons rather than only because Trotsky did, in the end.)
Okay. They do not want to say, however, that there can be anything
other than capitalism and socialism, after feudalism. There are two
reasons for this. Adherence to doctrine - marxist and leninist - and
because once you admit this possibility you have admitted that
eliminating capitalist economics means more than eliminating private
productive property and profits - entailing, also, getting rid of the
economic source (not just authoritarian politics) of the power and
wealth of the ruling class in the Soviet system, which opens the door
to the absolutely verboten possibility - that even the most
aggressively anticapitalist leninism is not a framework seeking
classlessness but is, instead, a framework seeking rule by the
coordinator class.

The editors say "Your attitude towards the former Soviet Union is
revealing in that it shows that you had nothing against the continued
existence there of the key features of capitalism that are production
for sale, money, wages, profits, etc but only to the fact that the
economic system involving these was controlled by a privileged ruling
class and not democratically by the workers."

This is rather amazing - again, not only because parecon eliminates
profit seeking and profits per se, but because Parecon also has no
production for sale - meaning for profits - at all. But it does have
production for use, and the users do have budgets and therefore buy
what they choose. And it does have numeric prices and budgets, which
is what they are calling money, and it does have income, which they
are calling wages to make it sound like it is something dolled out
miserly by bosses. But the pejorative connotations are all merely
assumed, asserted, and imposed on the words I have offered, because
doctrine says it must be.

And then incredibly the editors say - "Parecon is thus revealed to be
the idea of the economic system that existed in Russia `self-managed'
by the workers. A sort of `self-managed capitalism' that could only
exist on paper."

What is going on is simple. There is the system the editors want -
true socialism, I guess they would call it - with whatever features
they have in mind, but I think, probably, nothing coherent, nothing
specified sufficiently to assess. Then, other than that system the
editors like, there must only be, well, capitalism, though in lots of
forms. There is a sense in which "capitalism" is the editors synonym
for "we don't want it."

So, the U.S. is capitalist, Russia was, and now parecon is too, and
apparently is more like Russia, no less, despite dumping central
planning, all private ownership, etc. etc. And all this is so, note,
just by decree, by definition, by the authority of humpty dumpty, in
my view, and I guess Trotsky, or whoever, in the editors' view.

You think I am being harsh? Look through the whole exchange and see if
you can find anyplace where the editors are doing anything other than
repeating their beliefs, as gospel - remember they are reviewing
parecon, not presenting their claims. See if they explain what it is
about balanced job complexes, or pareconish remuneration, or
participatory planning, or self managed decision making, that is
insufficient or bad. In fact, see if they even say what these things
are, what they entail, anything about them there defining features of
the system they are rejecting. See if they explain how it is, which is
to say by what dynamic, in what form, and benefitting whom, profits or
if they prefer monetarized surpluses accrue, or any kind of economic
injustice in power or income occurs, for that matter. None of that
appears, because there is no need, in the editors view, to address
parecon as it is described and conceived. Rather one only needs to
say, it isn't what we favor, so it must be capitalism, and now we will
dig around and find a few words we can mishandle and then use to
evidence the point.

It may sound differently to others, but I think it is honest and
perhaps useful for me to admit this is the way their formulations
sound to me. Plus, honestly, they also sound incredibly ignorant, for
people claiming to be experts on capitalism and on its rejection, of
even the most simple economic insights. This is quite sad I think, not
a matter of blame, but of depression over the state of the left, or
this left's, comprehension of economics.

If you can't work with a napkin to derive and justify your thoughts,
without taking a doctrine as given, and if the doctrine is way
outdated and flawed, you find yourself in a whole lot of difficulty.

The editors end, "Socialism will break free from the financial
bureaucracy of capitalist calculation. It will treat people as ends in
themselves. It will produce directly for human needs. It will break
the link between individual effort and individual consumption. That's
what all those who consider themselves to be anti-capitalist should be
aiming at."

Actually, with the exception of breaking the link between individual
effort and individual consumption, which, for able bodied people would
be a disaster for rationally trying to meet anyone's needs equitably,
as well as for discerning desirable directions for economic
development, the above list is precisely what parecon attains, though
only a small part of what it attains. I hope at some point folks with
views like the editors, and the editors, and advocates of parecon, can
have a discussion that arises from a napkin mentality, not a volume
two doctrinal mentality."

Cheers, Rebecca