Participatory Economy

[ResistanceInOceania]

http://www.parecon.org/intro.htm

Instead of competitive or authoritarian allocation which expands the profit and power of ruling classes, we want cooperative, self-managed allocation that expands social well being, development, and justice


Google video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8...recon&hl=en

[jack]

So what about that ruling class are they just going to dissappear ?
There will still be people on top, they will still be or get greedy and they will still control the resources.
Socialism will result right back to mass oppression and feudalism, we will all be (well, most of us) equally enslaved. Living off of there unwanted handouts.

[Rothbardian_Freedom_Lover]

Jack, you're absolutely correct. Socialism is a terrible system, as is corporatism/fascism. Keynesian and Neo-Classical "capitalism" aren't much better, either. Austrian (pure free-market) capitalism has produced the most economic growth, and it was during the laissez-faire period in America that the Industrial Revolution took place, giving us the high standard of living that we enjoy today. Now, you could bash me for this, because of the "Robber Barons", but the biggest ones, Rockefeller, Morgan, Warburg, and Rothschild, got their wealth and power through manipulating the government to grant them corporate welfare, subsidies, and manipulating the anti-trust laws to squash their competition. The agorist system would also be decent. But this current system, this mixture between Keynesian economics, Neo-Classical economics, and Corporatism, does not work!

[drew hempel]

I heard Michael Alberts talk in person in Chicago for the Anarchist counter-convention to the DNC -- 1996. Parecon, his philosophy, is just too general. He just flaunts this vague theory that has no bite! Nothing has happened with it!

Now take this guy -- he's doing hard time in a Federal prison -- for creating "Rebate Bank Notes" --

http://paranoiamagazine.com/robinhoodbanks.html

I tried to order his new alternative currency book but apparently the publisher wasn't giving him any royalties.

[ResistanceInOceania]

Its not really socialism. Co ops (a company owned by the people who work there, with a socially and evironmentally conscience way of operating) just link up and do business with other coops.

http://www.coopamerica.org/
Co-op America's Green Business Program provides the networks, resources, and technical assistance needed for socially and environmentally responsible businesses to emerge and thrive in communities across the US.

This is one way to abandon corporations and build communities

[drew hempel]

If you read Wayne Madsen's book "Jaded Tasks" (2006) -- he's got a chapter focusing on the CIA organizing a cooperative in East Timor that led to the Timorese to rebell because the conditions were slave-wages.

I tried to find it on his website -- http://waynemadsenreport.com but the search engine didn't bring it up.

It's something like the "National Association of Cooperatives" -- and it's a CIA front in Central America as well.

Also there's a new book called "The Myth of Civil Society" -- something like that --- I'll find it... http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Civil-Society-D...TF8&s=books

OK -- so that's an academic analysis arguing that unless there's a strong national Leftist party then anarchist cooperatives actually FACILITATE FASCISM.

There's another book showing this as the central plan of Japan.... hold on..
http://www.amazon.com/Valley-Darkness-Thom...TF8&s=books

Yeah that book is amazing because it's a very detailed description of how Fascist Japan was organized by neighborhood block groups starting with each family and then all the way up to the Emperor -- total control! But it was all "progressive" like so much of the 1930s -- eugenics was a progressive issue along with sanitation!!

So cooperatives are great (I've worked a lot in them!) but I think there needs to be a closer scrutiny of the bourgeois values that enable strong hierarchies.