Parecon or libertarian communism?

Yeah, this debate was interesting, it's a shame that we didn't have time to finish it. Hopefully publishing it as it stands now would be a catalyst to continuing it...

The libcom group has previously denied that it is a group... is it now a group with a defined politics?

We have never denied that we were a group. We have always stated that we were a group.

For example, this has been at the top of our "about" page since we started:
The libcom group is a small collective of libertarian communists based in and around London, we maintain libcom.org, and as individuals are involved with a number of other groups and activity.
http://libcom.org/notes/about

we then expand on this, going into more detail and listing all of the group members here:
http://libcom.org/notes/about/who-are-libcom-group

Also, see our Wikipedia entry for example. Or any of the articles we collectively write and which we credit to the "libcom.org group". We have also written, as a group, introductions to many of the articles on the site. And frequently refer to ourselves as a group in forum discussions.

So I am completely at a loss as to why you are stating that, like we're some sort of shadowy cabal.

In terms of our politics, we have them roughly defined, as libertarian communist (the clue is in the site name). Articles collectively signed as from the libcom.org group also represent our politics, and are available here under our group author tag:
http://libcom.org/tags/libcom-org

where's rkn and z these days, and j, gav etc...?

Working mostly. Still about, just not on here much

I'm a little confused by the libertarian commie vs parecon aurguments. I've read some of the back and forth discussions on ZNET, but I'm still scratching my head. They seem to advocate reletively the same thing to me. Can someone explain...or even give links...to the main differances between these ideas?

***I was unable to open the PDF file for some reason***

I just read an introduction and this look very interesting... I'm printing pdf.. .

the pdf's busted. shows up with the title page, and a few background images, but no text from the debate. can we get a fixed version?

it works for me, using preview and adobe reader 9 & 5

I'm away from my computer until Monday, but I'll try and sort out a new PDF then. I'd guess this is a versions thing, if it was created with a newer version of adobe than you're using to read it that would explain why it works ok for some people and not others.

this is what the debate is all about; there are a lot of apparent similarities, but we (libcom) suggest the difference is the difference between 'a fair days work for a fair days pay' and 'abolition of the wage system'.

I have in my own feeble way challenged Parecon ideas on my blog from the free access SPGB position which generally overlaps witht the libcom anarcho-communist critique , and my efforts can be viewed here for anyone interested

http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2008/06/pareconfusion.html

http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2008/10/pareconitis.html

http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2008/11/another-dig-at-parecon.html

http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2008/10/michael-alberts-failings.html

http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2007/08/chomsky-on-class.html

Some of the comments and remarks are significant

The most entertaining exposition of Parecon is at Star Trek Federation http://vanparecon.resist.ca/StarTrekEcon/#money

And as an aside , the Marxist ( state capitalist ) version of Star Trek Federation is at http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html

I've never quite understood the difference of participatory economics. Do they advocate democratic control of the economy, means of production, and the workplace too? Because that also goes in line with many libertarian communist currents.

It's worth noting here that Joseph Kay uses the word "need" in completely self-contradictory way. In response to one of Mark's points, Joseph says he uses "need" to include wants. But later he starts distinguishing things that are needed from "luxuries." But "luxuries" are things people want, and thus, by his original definition, something that they "need."

Presumably each person is only to concume a finite share of the social product in libertarian communism. what is the principle that determines this share? if you say "need," then define "need" as want, it means "to each whatever they want." that places no limit on any individual's share of the social product and thus doesn't answer the question.

Joseph never answers Mark's criticisms in this regard. If you say that each takes freely "first come first served" that is a principle that rewards the more aggressive, the greedy, the type A personality. if you say that each person is limited to a roughly equal share of the social product, you also have to assume there is some way of measuring what that might be. but Joseph says he's against "measuring." again, very convenient for the greedy, assertive, type A personalities.

another problem arises with Joseph's distinction between what he calls a "push" and "pull" planning system. he says a "push" economy is defined by quotas. but he seems to be confusing central planning with participatory economy which is a form of decentralized negotiated coordination. the idea is that the community or neighborhood assemblies/councils assemble both requests for public goods (health care, hospitals, schools, public transit service, new parks etc) and for individual wants, and then puts this out as a request. the worker production organizations then respond with estimates of costs, proposals of what resources they need to meet the requests, etc. Thus since the planning is driven by requests for production, it seems to be a "pull" production system, and hence Joseph Kay's suggestion it isn't doesn't seem to hold up. thus within a participatory economy what is produced does emerge as an emergent property of the interactive system design.

i'm afraid you've misunderstood. needs are arrayed along a spectrum from physiological neccesities to luxuries. luxuries could be inherently scarce items or those which we desire but would soonest give up if given a choice (which would probably be quite different under communism than now). maslow's 'hierarchy of needs' is something in this ballpark, although i don't particularly agree with its specifics. the order of goods/services on such a spectrum would need to be the product of councils, as i say clearly in the debate:

and...

... again, you seem to have misunderstood what i wrote. nowhere do i say i am against measure. that would be absurd, and since i advocate pull production and databases completely impossible. i'm against "parecon's fixation with measure" and in particular its obsession with 'a fair days pay for a fair days work', recognised as conservative over a century ago. i have already quoted the relevent section above in response to georgestapelton.

as to whether i don't reply to Mark's point, my reply was:

you might not like my answer, but it's simply wrong to say i dodge the question.

the point we make is that there are loads of non-monetary ways to discourage the minority of anti-social people who want 'to each according to their needs' but not 'from each according to ability', not least of which is (as an ultimate vision) abolishing work as a separate activity which people are only motivated to do on pain of poverty by a wage system. it may even be the minority is small enough to simply tolerate, and allow socialisation and stigma to keep it in check. it may be we have to adopt some of the above methods of scarcity management.

i also think it's an exageration to say 'first come first served' rewards aggressiveness. i'm talking about going down the store and seeing there's no pasta on the shelf, so getting some noodles instead. not having round-the-block queues fo scarce items - the presence of such demand would immidiately increase production in accordance with social priorities on the 'pull' basis i describe. if this was insufficient, the priorities could be revised (i.e. if people decided they really did want pasta more than noodles, or more carbohydrate staples over something above them in the priority list). but there's also various other solutions posed. people may to decide to allocate inherently scarce beachfront homes say by lottery, or put them on a rota, or give a year's residence to particularly awesome people (someone who saved a load of lives, or whatever - or to parecon tastes, those who put in effort above and beyond the expected). there isn't a one-size fits all solution, but we offer plenty of suggestions, all of which i find preferable to a wage system.

i mean if we're talking about not answering questions, why should i risk my life on the barricades for a society where if i work harder i can earn more and buy more stuff? i can do that already, it's rubbish.

by this logic, central planning is also a 'pull' system, just a really shit one, since when central planners notice a stockpile of skodas and bread queues round the block, they make some amendments. i'm drawing the distinction from business theory, where essentially it relates to the distinction between production triggered by quotas (however they are decided), whether they are consumed or not, and production driven by the depletion of safety stocks.

for example, an unexpectedly wet year means more than usual umbrellas and wellingtons are being consumed. under the system i describe (which was only a description of how things might work, which i stress is going to be inferior to "the self-organisation of millions, whose collective genius far exceeds that of any individual"), production of these items would increase to keep the safety stocks up. this would mean the producers of these would have more demand for raw materials and workers, and would request them from the local/regional workers' council, made up of recallable delegates. they would then co-ordinate that in accordance with the social priorities - i.e. they wouldn't divert rubber from producing medical supplies or dildos or whatever was higher priority, but from lower priority items. only if this lead to undesirable outcomes - the reduced production of things that in retrospect people did desire more than wellies and umbrellas - would there be a need to involve everybody in revising the overall priorities, dropping waterproofs down the list.

by contrast under parecon, faced with a surge in demand for wellies, consumer and workers' councils would engage in futurological speculation to set a new production quota and perhaps a new pricing level to 'fairly' reflect it. this would juggle back and forth a bit through iteration until a 'fair price' was haggled and then the new quota would be set. but wait! before a decision could be made, the degree of 'effectedness' for each participant would need to be established so that their vote could be weighted accordingly. in a region with a similar climate, we could easily be talking millions of people. some of them might quite enjoy the rain, and splashing about in puddles, are they to be allowed a vote? maybe 0.1 votes? Others really hate the rain, it makes them clinically depressed. should they get extra votes? Others still already own raincoats, so they should probably be disenfranchised. unless they were planning to switch to umbrellas, in which case they are a bit effected. 0.3 say. (see what i mean about a "fixation with measure"?)

this would have to happen all the time, consulting millions, in order to make the simplest adjustments to demand. it's completely unworkable. slack planning and a reliance on aggregate non-deviation offer no additional benefit, since they would also apply to the communist system (the former being an aspect of safety stocks, the latter being a statistical characteristic of demand per se).

you don't understand the model. it's easy of course to simply parody ideas. but it does you no good if it's a strawman. the business about conservatives talking about "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work" is a nice bit of slapstick but inappropriate as serious discussion.
.no conservative ever advocated that remuneration should be based solely on how long and onerous and intense their work is. capitalist income would be illegal on that principle.

anyway, if we assume that people will do their share in a system of collectively run production, and if we assume that work is re-org'd in the way proposed by balanced jobs idea (which you say you agree with), then we can understand the principle as basically calling for an equal consumption credit earned per hour of work. and the point to doing so is in part to motivate people engaging in productive activity, which will be particularly relevant in a libertarian communist society as it emerges from capitalism. if people are seriously slacking off and not doing their bit at work, you don't think their coworkers will know? You don't think their coworkers will resent them?

where does this idea of "production quotas" come from? It's not in the participatory economics literature. the model does use an ideal price system. the price system is designed solely to measure how strongly people prefer certain outcomes...how high a priority people place on X versus A. you talk about a hierarchy of need, maybe it is clearer, if we think of need as self-defined, as a question of degree of importance or priority, which will vary from person to person, but tend to coalesce in regard to certain things that can be provided as public goods carried at social expense...education, health care, child care, etc. but even if we were to imagine the whole of production to be items provided free and carried at public expense in this way, we'd still need a way to figure out costs so as to avoid a hopelessly
ineffecient system. and that means we'd need some way of putting the various inputs on some scale of measurement.

A problem that needs to be taken account of is that if there is a surge in demand for some item, that affects not just the worker group who produce that item, but all the other groups who produce inputs for that item. there are ripple effects. if there is a surge in demand for bicycles, there will be a surge in demand for the things that bicycles are made out of.

it's not good enough to make up some single priority list because of the ripple effects throughout the economy.

and to have a zillion decisions about allocation of resources to be made by a single central workers' council is in fact a form of central planning. rather than doing that, the basic idea of participatory economics is a system social negotiation, between the production side and the request/consumption side.

the surge in demand comes in as increased requests. this could happen through the workers organization running distribution centers or through the neighborhood council via individual requests. to begin with any production organization needs to have some plan as to how many its products it's going to produce in a given period. if the requests outrun what was anticipated in its plans, then it can propose to adjust upward the number of umbrellas it will produce. the number of umbrellas to produce isn't a "quota" handed to them, but their own proposal.

why are they interested in keeping up with what people want? Well, they are providing more social benefit if they produce what people want. producing social benefit is sort of the condition we place on them being in control of those means of production. ultimately means of production are not being used effectively producing X if there were more benefit producing Y. it's necessary to consider the question: under what conditions would be disband a group producing something? In other words, what is the libertarian communist equivalent of bankruptcy? you can't assume this won't happen.

so, if this factory proposes to increase production, it will also need to propose -- put in requests -- to its suppliers. minor adjustments of this sort would be typically accomodated through the slack that it makes sense to include in any plan...you can't really estimate exactly how many umbrellas, bicycles or whatever that people are going to want in the next year or two. And in this case I'm talking about the workers' plan. major changes such as those due to catastrophes or other major disruptions would be likely to require a more wide-ranging and concerted social effort at adjusting plans of the various groups.

i would agree that the priniciple of self-management articulated by Hahnel & Albert is a bit vague, "say in proportion to degree affected." but it can be understood fairly intuitively if we look at cases. are all the decisions about what goes on in a workplace to be decided by some set of general assemblies and councils of the whole population? Well, the problem there is that this could then become a basis for setting bosses over people, in the name of "accountability." It denies them autonomy in govverning their own work activity. if we say that we're for the overcoming of alienated labor, shouldn't workers then self-manage their own work and the places where they work?

it's true of course that some of the decisions in regard to what goes on in a particular workplace will affect others in society in various ways...will it pollute? what about the quality of the product? is this use of these socially owned resources producing in accord with people's priorities for use of the socially owned means of production?

if we think about decisions about your own consumption, why should anyone else make that decision for you? or if a community is making a decision about what sorts of public goods and services it wants, why shouldn't they decide on what they want? if some chemical used in production emanates out into a community and poisons people, why shouldn't they be able to simply ban it? and so on. thus the idea of individuals and various collectives having autonomous areas of decision-making seems to be part of the idea of a non-alienated and self-managed society. so the principle about "decisions being made by those most affected" I take as a principle about design of the social institutions. I take it as saying that individuals and households need to have control over their own sphere of life such as what they chose to request for their consumption, that communities need to have some autonomous decision-making power in regard to the public goods that people want for that community and larger communities (regions etc) they are a part of, that people in doing work should have control over the decision-making that governs their activity in that area. the idea of a participatory planning, then, is the idea that the plans that these various groups and individuals in society make are adapted or adjusted to each other through a set of democratic procedures that are designed to avoid exploitation.

btw, i would consider the participatory economics proposal as a particular specification of a libertarian communist society. it's a system based on "production for use, not for profit". "firms" don't exist because worker production groups accrue no income from sale of commodities. workers receive effort based (hours of work based) consumption credits...essentially from the society as a whole. the community assemblies and regional federations of these have power to ensure a generous level of public goods, including a generous level of public goods provided free at public expense, covering needs such as health care, education, child care, public transit and so on. This is why Hahnel says that remuneration is not simply "for effort" but "for effort and need."

anyway, enough from me. you can carry on your discussion with Mark's group.

i do have responses - not all in disagreement, but Mark's said he's happy to continue the debate so i think it is best to pick it up with him.

needless to say i don't think the only way to organise production and distribution is with a price system and a wage system, however democratic, and it is in fact the ripple effects which i think would trap parecon in an endless feedback loop of meetings and discussions, whereas the point of the non-monetary system i sketch is to adapt to changes in demand dynamically in accordance with social priorities without having to consult everybody everytime (which as your correct observation of the interconectedness of production implies could be anything up to 6 billion).

the articles are now all online as library articles, linked from the article at the top of this page.

the pdf problem is almost certainly a versions issue, so if you're having problems try updating your version of acrobat reader (free) and see if that helps.

Would I be out of line for suggesting that "The Abolition of Work" is a good piece that helps underpin some of the opposition to 'effort/sacrifice' remuneration systems?

I think the arguments regarding natural (or nurtured, whatever) talent are also on-the-money. The mention of the 'gifted slacker' really hammered it home for me, *any* effort-based remuneration falls into weird edge cases: If it takes me less effort to do a task, do I get 'rewarded' less than the person who has to work harder to do the same? In the modern economy the answer is yes.

Along those lines I would like to propose the idea that a result is instances of self-abuse by middle-of-the-road people just trying to get by. A simple example, I'm sure you're capable of your own extrapolation: Why do so many people drink coffee in the morning? Because if you're not performing in the morning, then you're not earning a paycheque. In order to retain your compensation and not simultaneously become a zombie, you are expected to have a substance addiction.

NB, the bulk of discussion about this document has taken place on our forums here:
http://libcom.org/forums/theory/pareecon-libcom-07082009

Doh my bad!

Greetings from Chile!

I'm reading the debate, and let me tell you it's a great material for learning and discussing. After reading I will translate it to the spanish, for those who do not speak or read english.

I hope in a week or two it will be finished, so I can send you.

gracias M. - glad you find it useful we can host the translation here when it's done

M I can't commit too much right now but if you want any help proofing let me know.

Thank you very much OliverTwister! I will need to show somebody the text because there are some words that I don't know so probably I will make some mistakes.

Greetings, and thanks Joey too

NB we have just added Marks latest response to our vision here:
http://libcom.org/library/pps-second-response

Hi!

The translation has taken me more than I thank, so it'll be complete after the time I told you.

By the way, I can't find the exact translation for 'Complimentary Holism'. If somebody knows the spanish term for that please tell me.

If it helps, that's a typo, it should be 'complementary holism'.