Subject: Re: AUT: ParEcon
From: chris wright <cwright.21stcentury-AT-rcn.com>
Date: 27 Feb 2003 10:31:56 -0600


I am not familiar with ParEcon stuff, but it seems to me that the very
title implies an acceptance of the separation of the political and the
economic which is part and parcel of bourgeois society's social
relations and exactly what libertarian communists should oppose.  I am
not for any kind of "economics", participatory or not.

As for the "boring" comment, I am all for the use of the term boring as
a sufficient condmenation, in the sense that the SI said "Boredom is
counterrevolutionary."  I was very tickled when Harald said that and its
a good point.

I am also torn on Gra's point.  I agree with him, but at the same time I
can't help but wonder if this PaEcon stuff isn't exactly the kind of
thing Marx had in mind and the opposite of what Gra is suggesting we
grapple with (as Harald and others have suggested in the past.)  That
is, where is a society of freely associated human beings, of social
individuals where the notions of "political" or "economic" no longer
have any meaning because our individual activity is also directly and
consciously social and therefore not fragmented, appearing in practice
today?

I think that movements like Open Source in the computer world point to
something very powerful because they explicitly and implicitly propose a
different way of living produced by people fundamentally alienated from
at least some aspects of the capital-labor relation based on their own
experience.  The response has been one in which people produce
use-values in a way that does not involve the production of
exchange-values.  There are genuine problems with Open Source in so far
as it reflects some technical insularity, some patriarchal and
technocratic aspects (such as the technophilia, a stubborn at times
refusal to take "users" seriously and a tendency to look down on people
who want a better appliance in a PC), and some confused free market
ideologues who can't see that the Open Source idea is exactly a threat
to capitalist social relations, but overall, a serious examination of
Open Source would to me be worth more than a lot of arguments over
ParEcon, which only holds any weight among Leftists, it seems.

Cheers,
Chris

On Thu, 2003-02-27 at 03:39, Julian Prior wrote:
> hi Dave and others,
> 
> John Crump wrote a review of Albert & Hahnel's book (+ others by the 
> South End Press lot) a while ago. I have a copy but need to check with 
> John first that it is ok to post it here.
> 
> cheers
> 
> Julian
> 
> On Wednesday, February 26, 2003, at 04:08  pm, Dave Graham wrote:
> 
> > Dear all
> >
> >
> > I too should very much like to see some work done on ParEcon. I keep 
> > going
> > back to ZNet and working through the 'primer' that is there. While
> > emotionally I am very put off by their description which I find utterly
> > dystopian - they have at least tried to outline a scheme.
> >
> > It's not hard to get involved in discussions about how 'things might 
> > work'
> > - most folk I work with know there's loads of ways society could be
> > reorganised for the better but we have no way of systematising this and
> > refining it.
> >
> > And too often it seems to me we allow ourselves to be put off by the 
> > Old
> > Man's warning about utopian schemes - but the point is we should now be
> > able to point to developments in the economy that will make more 
> > precise
> > what could not be foreseen in the 19th century. That is we could become
> > less utopian - is it possible for instance to envisage the 'end of 
> > value'
> > with the ability to electronically reproduce stuff virtually for 
> > 'free' for
> > instance?
> >
> > We could at least try and formulate a few principles and as I recall we
> > very nearly got well into it some months /years back when we chewed 
> > over
> > what was meant by that famous passage in the 'Critique of the Gotha
> > Programme' [I recall Harald saying that it was Marx at his most
> > Proudhonist!] Well if Marx was wrong what's the harm in saying so?
> >
> > All this stuff should be on the Archive for those who have only joined 
> > the
> > list lately.
> >
> > Is it worth revisiting?
> >
> > Gra




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