From: "dave graham" <davgraham-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: AUT: Particpatory Economics
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 11:17:24 +0000


Dear all

It may be that somebody on this list can help.

On another [UK based] list I subscribe to, there has been some [not a lot] 
of discussion about Participatory Economics. Some of the people, many 
calling themselves anarchist of one kind or another, seem to think that this 
is a kind of solution. I have been referred to Micheal Albert's site where 
there is a sort of lecture series on the topic and after working my way 
thru' three or four of his folksy, chatty musings, I am left very 
underwhelmed at the depth and poverty of thought there and the quite 
deliberate, it seems to me, mixing up of categories and concepts to the 
point where it becomes a struggle to continue with it.

Is there anyone who has done/knows of a critque of this stuff?

It seems to me it makes all the right noises about 'commodity production' 
and 'alienation' but then proposes to reproduce same with 'balanced job 
complexes' and 'indicative pricing'.

When I was little, my grandmother called this 'having your cake and eating 
it'.

Anybody else agree?

and isn't communism the 'real movement that aims to change the existing 
order of things' rather than the invention of Albert and his fellow 
professors?

I wonder how long 'indicative pricing' would survive some serious 
'proletarian shopping' for instance?

Or have I got it all wrong and am doing ParEcon a serious injustice?

Gra

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