From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no> Subject: AUT: Re: Particpatory Economics Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 23:15:40 +0100 Gra wrote: 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 them- selves 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 critique of this stuff? There was a discussion on the Organise list a year or two back. There was critiques made by several, among others by Ilan, Paul Bowman, I think, and myself. I might have these posts somewhere, I am not sure. But they were not fully worked out critiques, nor do I personally know of such a systematic critique. I remember there was a critical review in Libertarian Labor Review (now renamed Anarcho-Syndicalist Review) years ago. Personally I am inclined to think that the most damaging critique of Participatory Economics, apart from everything else that I find wrong with it, is that it sounds terrible boring. I guess it is easy to end up there when you see "producers" and "consumers" as two worlds apart. and you start out with some mathematical model. I don't doubt Micheal Albert's sincerity though. . This said, I see it as positive that people try to put on print their thoughts about a world beyond capitalism, even when as I think is the case with Participatory Economics, they enter into blind alleys. >and isn't communism the 'real movement that aims to change >the existing order of things' ... "the real movement" defintion has never convinced me much. Not that I will suggest the opposite, a movement that is not real, just that I find the phrase wholly meaningless. What makes one move- ment more "real" than another? And have there ever existed a "real movement " without any ideas about its means and ends? Harald --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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