tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12177833.post115431561557111218..comments2024-03-21T02:16:25.967-07:00Comments on Freethought Weekly: Book Review: Parecon, Life After CapitalismDeltahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15708796218860983185noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12177833.post-75682686826420648342007-04-02T18:33:00.000-07:002007-04-02T18:33:00.000-07:00Congratulations for the excellent review!! Here th...Congratulations for the excellent review!! Here the author doesn't let himself / herself fall into the old condescending pit, which consists of praising the efforts, the good intentions, the research and so forth of Albert and bad writers like him. The review discusses the book itself. And, as far as the book solely is concerned - let us speak as frankly as possible -, Parecon doesn't have much to offer in terms of ideas. A few good insights, all very badly developed (some of the old moral arguments that have proved useless in economics again and again), repetitions to make the book longer, a tedious style etc. We cannot count on Albert's book to overcome capitalism. Definitely. Unfortunately. Maybe Antonio Negri has better things to offer. Although I also doubt... In my opinion we are still in need of a powerful vision of what life might be after capitalism, and how to get there...pgdohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03497890031896512353noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12177833.post-1154558628567796362006-08-02T15:43:00.000-07:002006-08-02T15:43:00.000-07:00sh,Perhaps, he meant that you have to "factor it i...sh,<BR/><BR/><I>Perhaps, he meant that you have to "factor it in" the Parecon in some way, not necessarily to literally "incorporate" it... Just guessing...</I><BR/><BR/>The quote that I was referring to is actually from a different book of his, but the full quote is <I>"Creating a parecon means, among many other things, that the private holdings of economic infrastructure of the rich are taken from them...against their wills, no doubt, in most cases"</I>.<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the comments SH =)<BR/><BR/>john,<BR/><BR/>Hi, I was hoping you would come back and give your thoughts on this.<BR/><BR/><I>why would superabundance be required to balance tasks?</I><BR/><BR/>Balancing jobs within a single industry would probably be able to be done without a superabundance, but what I think is unlikely is being able to balance <I>across</I> industries as Albert says must be done because of course some industries will be more pleasant to work in than others. I think that there could be real problems in travel time between jobs at different industries, and this would cut back productivity. If I have to leave a science lab every day to go out to the farm and help harvest, that could take an hour of travel each day to do. Of course, I could do different jobs on different days, but then I wouldn't be at each job everday and perhaps work on a project might be delayed if it has to wait on me. Or maybe my work involves working with a specific team, and it's hard for us to all agree on which days to show up to this particular job. See what I'm saying?<BR/><BR/><BR/>I think that a post-revolutionary world is likely to be very chaotic at first and there would be a great deal of work that needed to be done to repair damage done to existing infrastructure, to feed and clothe those who in today's world aren't taken care of, and to develop their own infrastructure so that they can take care of themselves. Education will desperately need to be done. Counter-revolutions will have to be dealt with. Pre-existing political structures will have to be dealt with. Proposed new political structures will have to be decided on (assuming any). I just don't think that with all this going on people are going to worry too much about balanced job complexes. Once things have calmed down, then debate on the subject might be good. <BR/><BR/><I>Some dissatisfaction and conflict, sure, but I think less than is currently experienced by the working poor</I><BR/><BR/>Oh, definitely not more than currently experienced. A Parecon would be vastly superior to a capitalist economy. If in the parecon the algorithms for determining job complex ratings were publicly available (which they surely would be) then people would not feel cheated by others, but would strive to change the algorithms if they thought them unfair.Deltahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708796218860983185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12177833.post-1154400133906756142006-07-31T19:42:00.000-07:002006-07-31T19:42:00.000-07:00He claimed that a parecon economy could probably e...<I>He claimed that a parecon economy could probably exist inside a country which was otherwise capitalist, but then also has said that it would be necessary to take private economic infrastructure and incorporate it into the participatory economy. What capitalist government is going to allow that to happen?</I><BR/><BR/>Perhaps, he meant that you have to "factor it in" the Parecon in some way, not necessarily to literally "incorporate" it... Just guessing...<BR/><BR/>I did not read the book and am only familiar with Parecon from little that I've read over the net. However, it does seem like the idea of job complexes, as well as some other ideas advanced by Parecon are unlikely to work in the real world. <BR/><BR/>For example, I would think that no matter how fair and detailed people will get in designing the job complexes, some will inevitably feel that they've got cheated, thus giving rise to dissatisfaction, conflicts, favoritism and ultimately to corruption.<BR/><BR/>Thank you for the review.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com