#parecon

Participatory economics

But revolution is not violence or cataclysm or any other simple single thing. It is a transformation of defining social relations and associated human behavior and beliefs in one or more central spheres of social life, no matter how those changes come into being.

world: #TBT!

That is, the lack of concrete qualitative information and the obscuring of social ties and connections in market economies make cooperation difficult, while competitive pressures make cooperation irrational. Neither buyers nor sellers can afford to respect the situation of the other. Not only is relevant information unavailable, solidarity is self-defeating. Polluters must try to hide their transgressions, since paying a pollution tax or modernizing their equipment would lower their profits. Even if one producer in an industry does not behave egocentrically, others will. If altruists persist in socially responsible behavior they will ultimately be driven out of business for their trouble, with egoists rising to prominent positions. Market competition squashes solidarity regardless of encompassing ownership relations.

Capitalism revolves around private ownership of the means of production, market allocation, and corporate divisions of labor. It remunerates property, power, and, to a limited extent, contribution to output, resulting in huge differences in wealth and income. Class divisions arise from differences in property ownership and differential access to empowered versus subservient work. Class divisions induce huge differences in decision-making influence and quality of life. Buyers and sellers fleece one another and the public suffers anti-social investment, toxic individualism, and ecological decay.

Now graduated and doing the job searching thing. But what I would most ideally like to do for work doesn't exist in Toronto. If geography and language were not a barrier, it would be epic to be part of the Mondragon enterprises (the giant network of mostly worker co-ops in the Basque Country); any organization that is in part based around “parecon” principles (ParIT in Winnipeg, South End Press, Z Mag); the Bolivarian University in Venezuela set up to experiment with balanced job complexes in an educational institution; an organization that does participatory planning really well (Porte Allegre in Brazil, or communal councils and municipalities in Venezuela, and I know Toronto Community Housing uses participatory budgeting but has not been greatly successful at it from what I've been told); work related to the solidarity economies in South America, or especially Greece where there are whole communities that supposedly function largely outside the capitalist economy; a “pay what you can” restaurant like Lentil As Anything in Australia or Der Wiener Deewan in Vienna.