Reviews and Views
Volume One
Nasser Paydar
What the capitalist system has historically, and especially over the past few decades, brought upon the international working class has terrified everyone, even those who believe in reforming this system. A few years ago, The Economist, the organ of the more right-wing bourgeoisie, influenced by this terror, while pointing out the enormous human catastrophes resulting from the current phase of capitalist life, called on the world’s capitalists and capitalist governments to find a way to perpetuate this system by establishing charitable institutions and paying a certain amount of alms and zakat from the astronomical profits of capital!!
“Michael Albert,” the famous American economist, is definitely not an economist, and his plan for a participatory economy does not rely on taxes, fees and alimony on capital profits. He is a philanthropic reformer who does not like capitalism because of some of its characteristics and wants to establish a type of economic relations that is far from the oppressive characteristics and defects of the capitalist system. “Michael Albert” is looking for a solution and in the process of his reformist and justice-seeking theoretical exploration, he has discovered “ Parecon.” (is an economic system based on participatory decision making
). His basic defects are three things, three things that are everything in the real world. These three things are:
1. He does not recognize capitalism.
2. His alternative to capitalism is not the socialist alternative of the working class.
3. He does not give any credibility, place, or relevance to the social class and the specific class movement that is the driving force behind replacing capitalism with a socialist alternative.
These three fundamental flaws cause Michael Albert, with all his idealism and justice-seeking, to fall into the realm of reality to the level of a reactionary utopian commentator, and at best, a harmless reactionary!! The present article follows a close examination of the three fundamental problems of the designer of the economic model.
Michael Albert and the Understanding of Capitalism
Theorist ” Parecon ” analyses the existing society not with the historical content of the dominant mode of production, but with the infectious herpes accumulated on the outer wall of its social existence. In his view, capitalism is theft, relies on selfish and antisocial financial incentives, is the founder of the existence of poverty and wealth, creates tyranny, is incompetent and makes people passive! It is reconciled with racism and sex, is oppressive and finally does not know the future. These are the set of determinations and characteristics that the owner of the theory of the participatory economy lines up together in order, firstly, to introduce the capitalist system with their help and, secondly, to issue his social indictment against this system by referring to them. None of the specific components cited by “Michael Albert” are specific to capitalist society, but all of them have existed in the greatest abundance in all previous social systems and in general in every class society. Poverty and wealth, oppression, theft, the centrality of individual and selfish motives, tyranny, all are common categories related to class societies in history, none of them was born with capitalism, although all of them will disappear from the field of human life with the disappearance of capitalism. All of these characteristics and scourges, from the beginning to the present day, in various forms and in accordance with the historical theme of the dominant mode of production in each era, have cast their dark shadow on the lives of inferior and working people, and their very existence is not a characteristic of the wage slavery system. Michael Albert’s fundamental problem with this particular part of the argument is that he does not trace the anatomy of civil society within the capitalist mode of production and consequently is unable to establish any inescapable internal relationship between the social, political, economic, civil, cultural, and moral consequences of this society and the content of that material mode of production. The capitalist system cannot be explained in terms of theft, poverty, sexism, tyranny, incompetence, and futility, just as the existence of capital cannot be explained in terms of the self-objectified labour, the means of production, money, private property, and the like. Capital is all of these, but none or all of them are necessarily capital, just as all of the characteristics that Michael Albert lists are associated with capitalism, but the presence of none of them is what distinguishes it from other class systems in history. Capital is the main element of a given historical stage in the development of human social production. It is a mode of production. Capitalist society is a society that is based on this mode of production in all respects, and to explain and understand all its determinations, existence and non-existence, one must refer to this place.
Capital is a social relationship. A relationship whose existence implies the complete exclusion of the vast masses of labour-power sellers from any kind of intervention in the fate of their work, production, and social life. A relationship in which the product of the labour and production of the world’s workers, that is, the overwhelming majority of the planet’s population, not only escapes their influence, but also becomes the absolute ruler over the entire existence and non-existence of its producers. Capitalist production is a historically determined mode of production in the light of which the values created by the labour of the working class assume the role of an independent, self-sufficient, and commanding force in relation to the human and social existence of this class! The objective conditions of labour become independent of the existence of living labour that creates and continuously recreates them, and in this direction they rush forward to the point where they make the whole of life, whether it is alive or not, what kind of living is it, how it is to die, and every minute of the life of the human beings who create and reproduce it the target of the most brutal and inhumane authoritarianisms. The objectified labour of the workers in the process of this mode of production decrees complete objectivity and puts all the masses of their class on the throne and gives objectivity to the existence of a class opposed to and hostile to the human and social existence of the working class. Capital is a historically determined social relation within which the worker becomes poorer, more powerless, more miserable, more deprived, more worthless, more dependent and more needy at the end of each production cycle than at the beginning of this cycle. According to Marx:
“At the end of the production process, the worker not only does not emerge richer than before, but he becomes poorer, because he has not only created the necessary conditions of work for the benefit of the capitalist, but also has caused the possibility of creating value, which was previously an inherent part of the worker’s living labour power, to be placed in the hands of the capitalist, who has mastered the living labour power, in the form of surplus value, in the form of surplus product, in the form of capital. The power of capital is now an independent value force that has risen up against the isolated and deprived helplessness of the worker. The worker has not only become the source of the wealth of others and of poverty and misery for himself but has also prepared the ground for establishing a relationship between this wealth and labour. This wealth receives a new vital spirit through the consumption of labour power and constantly increases its richness…” (Grundrisse, vol. 1)
Tyranny and dictatorship, poverty, the existence of classes, the type of property, theft and all that “Michael Albert” lists as the corruptions of capitalist society are the inevitable consequences of the productive basis of this system and the inevitable result of the relationship of buying and selling labour power. Referring to these categories as the human scourges of capitalism without referring to the central core of the existence of this system is only an attempt to launch a moral dialogue. A dialogue that does not solve any pain for any worker anywhere and in turn blocks the way to a real and class-based understanding of pain.
“Capitalism is theft…” Not only because: “The hard work of a large part of the people makes a few rich” or because “In the state of New York City, poor and rich neighbourhoods are distinguished by gross differences in livelihood and welfare,” but because New York City and the entire human world are built on the relationship of surplus value production. Because the vast majority of the world’s population sells their labour power as a commodity as their only means of livelihood and survival. The problem with the capitalist system is not that the owners of capital, out of laziness and greed, do not pay workers enough wages and inevitably a poor majority and a rich minority become rich!! The problem is that the foundation of capitalism’s existence is based on the production of capital and only capital. The real problem is that the idle worker is the labour process and the social product of his labour and production. By selling his labour power, he completely loses his entire human existence, his will, his authority, his involvement and his connection with his work. With the exchange of labour power and capital, the worker becomes such a miserable, desperate, and helpless being that no other door is open to him except for obligatory and forced obedience to the will of capital. The capital relationship is the relationship of surplus value production, and by selling his labour power, the worker falls into a position where his existence is relevant only as a producer of surplus value and capital, and outside this sphere he has no validity, role, or relevance for existence. “Capitalism is theft” not because it steals from the products of the workers’ labour, but because it steals from them the foundation of the human and social existence of the overwhelming majority of the population of the planet and the foundation of the domination of the vast masses of the world’s workers over the labour process and the fate of their labour.
“Capitalism is alienating and antisocial,” not only in the sense that “it relies on individual and selfish motives and the search for happiness for itself, and kind people receive the leftovers,” but also in the very clear and explicit reason that whatever the workers work and produce is not in the service of their livelihood and well-being, but is transformed into a power against them and into an anti-humanist force against all the pillars of their human life. This is because every moment of production and work of the working class is a moment in the strengthening of the foundations of the authority of capital as a force beyond life, dominating the life and anti-life of the working masses of the world. Capital is produced by the worker, but by establishing an existence independent of him and his class, it rules over the entire being and non-being of the working people of the world. The relationship to capital is the comprehensive alienation relationship of the worker not only with the product of his labour but also with the entire activity, role, and influence that he performs and plays in the labour process. Let us cast a glance at the present existence of the world. From east to west and from north to south, the earth is filled with goods produced by the working masses of the world, but no worker anywhere in this world has had any involvement in whether or not this infinite world of products is produced. The total amount of weapons produced each year by workers, without any will or intervention of any worker, and against any desire, will or inclination of the working masses, is staggering. The production of weapons is just one simple and ordinary example. This rule applies to the entire capitalist mode of production, even to the most basic necessities of life and the means of human life. The “alienation and asociality of capitalism” is not limited to the role of selfish incentives for work and production in this system but is the forced phenomenon of the absolute alienation of the worker from the process of work and production, human and social activity, and the product of his own work process.
“Capitalism is tyrannical” not only because workers are not involved in decisions about work and production, and as Michael Albert puts it, there is no “workers’ control.” But also, because the capital relation is a relation of the all-encompassing freezing and dissolution of the existence of working people in the process of production of surplus value and capital. Dictatorship here is not just the dictatorship of a handful of selfish people who interfere with the involvement of workers in the planning of work and social production. On the contrary, the dictatorship of dead labour over living labour. Dead labour, which is capital, is self-expanding, “continuously creates necessary labour in order to obtain surplus labour, increases the possibility of necessary labour in order to increase the surplus” (Marx, Grundrisse), and in order to do this, it must have complete control over the labour process, over what is produced and what is not produced, what work is done and what is omitted, how much is produced and how the product of labour is distributed, and everything else, and it uses all this power of control simultaneously in its own valorisation process. To achieve and guarantee this dominance, capital needs total control of society and absolute domination over all spheres of the social life of workers. At the same time, achieving this domination requires contractures, legislation, civilization, education, the state, customs and morality, and all the institutions, transactions, and relationships that have emerged as the necessary superstructures of the process of capital reproduction or the relationship of surplus value production and exist to realize the tyranny of capital over the mass of workers who sell labour power.
Capitalist tyranny is the dictatorship of the relationship of buying and selling labour power, and its existential philosophy is to line up the entire mass of capital producers around the world in the service of the reproduction, self-expansion, and self-aggrandizement of capital, and in this regard, it rushes forward to the absolute deprivation of any kind of freedom, authority, and human rights. The type of practices of this tyranny is also determined by capital and based on the specific determinations of the process of capital appreciation. It may wear the clothes of modern secular civil society and build a talisman of democracy on its own inappropriate stature, it may draw the sword of Hitler’s fascism from its sheath, perhaps it may take on the guise of the bureaucratic dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shahi and lean on the flag of the motherland, and perhaps it may also raise the turban of Pan-Islamism on its head, raising the sail of stability on the sea of workers’ blood.
“Capitalism is oppressive…” But not in the sense that the capitalists of countries compete with each other to gain more profits and pollute the atmosphere of brotherhood between “countries” with profit-seeking competition!! But because the very existence of capital is the foundation of all the injustices, freedom-killings, inequalities, injustices, evils, crimes and every kind of evil and slander that plague humanity in our time. The existence of capital means forcing the vast majority of the inhabitants of the earth to do surplus work, that is, the wage slavery of the producers of capital, that is, the deprivation of all human rights and freedoms from the workers of the world with the aim that their surplus work and the continuation of the production of surplus value by them make possible the life of capital and the conditions and requirements for the reproduction of capital. Capitalism is oppressive for the obvious and naked reason that the existence of capital requires the existence, survival and dominance of all oppressive anti-human laws, institutions, relations and transactions. Every dinar of surplus labour and every additional dinar of surplus labour is a criminal attack on the right of working people to dominate the labour process, activity, and product of their labour, and the extension of the relationship of surplus value production to the level of social relations and legal, civil, moral, cultural, and social superstructures implies the freezing of human life in the most oppressive, cruel, and inhumane forms of deprivation of rights and freedoms. The capitalist system is an oppressive system because the deepest, most widespread, and greatest destruction of all conditions for the free development of humans is a necessary condition for the existence, growth, and self-expansion of capital.
“Capitalism is racist and sexist,” but not only because it reinforces racism, but also because the elimination of every form of racism, discrimination, and inequality in the present world is tied to the ultimate elimination and end of the existence of this system. Racism is the forced ideological and social evaporation of the production and reproduction of capital. What the relationship of buying and selling labour power produces and sublimates from its depths in the form of thoughts, culture, beliefs, habits, and traditions cannot but be accompanied by a high concentration of racism and the humiliation of one part of humanity by another. Capitalism is filled with the stench of sexism for the specific reason that the buying and selling of sex is an inseparable part of the market for the accumulation and reproduction of capital in the world. In the customs and traditions of capital, eating bread, drugs, automobiles, sex, pens, germ weapons, books, tobacco, and antibiotics are all of the same kind, all profit-bearing commodities whose sale is the need to obtain the surplus value hidden in their existence. Whichever is more profitable is certainly more preferable, more justified, more reasonable, more acceptable and more completely desirable for capital. “The future of capitalism is unknown” not only because “markets are pressured by short-term calculations”! But fundamentally because every moment of capitalism’s existence is an octopus’s attack on the foundation of human life. The life of capital is intertwined with its forced and compulsory self-expansion. The continuous self-expansion of capital depends on the transformation of all the world’s natural resources and resources into the means of capital’s increased value. What threatens the life of humanity in the form of environmental pollution is an indispensable condition for capital’s growth and self-expansion. Capital does not only look at nature in this way; man, in the perspective of capital’s care and surveillance, is a commodity that produces profit, and his existential validity outside the circuit of the necessities of profit and surplus value production is absolutely nullified.
Michael Albert and “ Parecon “
We have seen that Michael Albert does not refer to the essence of capitalism in describing it. He does not explore the anatomy of this system in terms of the purchase and sale of labour. He speaks of the existence of theft, evil, corruption, the unknown future, tyranny, racism, sexism, and oppression by capitalism, but he does not explore the organic relationship of these human sufferings and pains with the relationship of surplus value production. Albert makes this grave error in his analysis of capitalism, and accordingly, in his struggle to find an economic and social alternative to capitalism, despite all the good and humanitarian intentions that are everywhere in his efforts, he is unable to break away from the real foundation and historical and productive essence of the wage slavery system. Albert’s model of the participatory economy is adorned with important socialist and radical components that clearly demonstrate his hatred of capitalism and his clear goodwill to free humanity from the suffering, oppression, and brutality of this system. The fundamental problem is his type of anatomy of existing society and his type of non-labour and reformist class and social critique of capitalism, which inevitably finds embodiment in the participatory economic model and fundamentally distorts the fundamental separation of this alternative from the system of wage slavery.
Parecon relies on the council planning of work and production, which in turn is a fundamental indicator of a socialist working-class economy. “In Parecon, men participate in economic life through interdependent councils, as producers and consumers [councils of all kinds] such as are always created if man tries to organize his own economy. In short, as has been done in Argentina.” Albert goes even further and rightly emphasizes the role of the councils as a vehicle for workers to decide what to produce and what not to produce? And how much of each thing to produce? Or how the process of distribution and consumption of the product of labour will be? And so on. Points that, taken together, are of great importance in breaking away from the capitalist mode of work and production. Parecon’s theorist takes all these important components into account, but despite all this, his workers’ councils remain the planning institution for the purchase and sale of labour power!!! He says:
“Second, wages in a Parecon depend on effort, not on how much one produces, or how powerful one is. A Parecon rejects the idea that we will earn more if we work longer, harder, or under more unpleasant or dangerous conditions. It also rejects the idea that someone with a bonus should be paid more. There is no logical, economic, or economic justification for this. The Parecon also rejects a rigid economy in which what a person earns depends on his position, as in a market economy. A little more paradoxically, the Parecon rejects the idea that a person can earn as much in an economy as he can earn in the form of private labour.”
Parecon does not abolish wage labour and does not distance himself from it. He sets many and strong conditions for equal wages for equal work, but he does not in any way reject or declare the basis of labour for receiving wages obsolete. Labor power in Albert’s model of the participatory economy is still a commodity and is sold and bought, although apparently a lot of effort is made to make this buying and selling fair!! Whoever works more receives a higher wage and, to put it more clearly, the socially necessary labour time for the production of products, which are still all commodities and are all exchanged in the form of commodities, is also the basis for determining the price of a worker’s labour power as a commodity.
The existential philosophy and the entire importance of the role of the councils in planning work and social production for the conscious anti-capitalist movement of the working class is that they will be the corresponding vessel for the abolition of wage labour and the commodification of labour, but in the park, although the necessary preconditions for this are largely provided in terms of the adaptation of the structure, the content of work and the type of role that the workers play there, the basis of wage labour and the purchase and sale of labour remains rigid and solid in place. This unfortunately shows that Albert’s model of the participatory economy, despite all its intense and intense emphasis on the role of the councils in planning work and social production and the promotion of this role to decisions about what to produce and what not to produce and all other issues, is ultimately unable to transcend the capitalist mode of production and, at best, only demonstrates his pure human passion and feeling for making capitalism as harmless as possible!! The decisive and insightful point in this section of the discussion is that Michael Albert proposes the formulation of work versus wages for his collaborative economy model at the beginning of the 21st century. A period of material development of history and a phase of the expansion of the capitalist mode of production in which the annual product of labour and production of workers in the majority of the globe is sufficient to declare spontaneously and unconditionally the voluntariness of labour or to completely deny any kind of subordination of human livelihood and well-being to labour. Only the Pentagon’s budget of more than 400 billion dollars per year for the cultivation and slaughter of humanity can exempt millions of people from any kind of need for labour. Thus, if Parecon ‘s calculations for the survival of wage labour also include factors such as the rate of production and the level of labour productivity, it is still a deeply unfounded and unjustified calculation. Leaving aside all this, even if in a society, due to specific economic conditions, it is not possible to directly and immediately implement voluntariness of labour, there is still no reason why the organized and united working class in the anti-capitalist All-Union Soviet movement should refrain from abolishing wage labour.
Here, and in connection with the Parecon council structure, I would like to add another fundamental point. Throughout his discussion, Michael Albert refrains from any reference to the fate of the state in his cooperative council economy!!! Ending the existence of any state above society and generally consigning the life of the state to the archives of history is an integral part of the process of breaking away from the capitalist mode of production. A very prominent and vital function of the councils of social planning and production from the point of view of the movement for the abolition of wage slavery of the working class is precisely the end of the subjectivity of the state. In the discussion of the characteristics of the Parecon division of labour, Albert rightly denies the role of centralized economic planning institutions or decision-making forces beyond the councils, but in any case, he is completely silent about the phenomenon called the state and its fate. I will explain below why Parecon, by this description, is ultimately a utopia, and why, for all its paradisiacal trappings, it will essentially be just a replacement for one form of capitalist hell, albeit one paved with good intentions. This is a point I will address, but for now let’s follow Albert’s discussion of other features of the participatory economy model.
The third characteristic of the Parecon is its demarcation with the division of labour prevalent in the capitalist system. Here, too, Michael Albert makes absolutely correct points. The avoidance of separating production planning from the process of objective realization of work and production is a very decisive component that he emphasizes. The denial of job privileges, the invalidation of people’s special position in acquiring a greater share in the distribution process, the opposition to any rights and entitlements arising from specialization, and the like, are all valuable strategies. The central and critical problem in this transition is that the park is in any case dependent on wage labour and the relationship of buying and selling labour power. Everyone receives wages according to the amount of work they do, and this in turn ensures that the sphere of human welfare, livelihood, and social facilities is simultaneously under pressure from the amount of work and the level of their wages. In such a situation, all members of society will not enjoy equal opportunities for social development. Whoever works more earns more income and inevitably benefits from the possibilities of intellectual growth, scientific development and, in general, greater ability. The important question for Michael Albert is how to resolve the contradiction between the elimination of all social, professional and occupational privileges and the inequality of social opportunities for human growth and excellence? The special privileges and rights of individuals cannot be eliminated by issuing a circular, by contract, or by force of law and the pressure of regulations. On the contrary, their material and social foundations must be eliminated, and this depends on “the free development of each human being dependent on the free development of all human beings.”
This in turn depends on people not being differentiated from each other on the basis of the amount of work and the level of income and the salary scale. In a word, it depends deeply on people not being wage earners and wage labour being abolished altogether. Albert says: “In capitalism, the owners of capital and the means of production determine what is produced, they hire and then fire wage slaves. But with the end of these relations, a classless society is not created. Another group, the owners, who continue to be defined by their position in the economy, can exercise unlimited power and even intensify pressure on a large part of the workers. To avoid the domination of the [supervisor or executive] relationship over the workers, it is necessary to replace the division of activities, such as that which prevails today in cooperatives, with new ideas for determining work roles. Parecon calls this third institutional principle the balanced line of work.”
The idea of the theorist of the participatory economy is that in his specific model there are no classes, private property disappears and no force beyond the lives of workers decides for them. Expectations that if fulfilled would truly herald the destruction of capitalism, but their achievement in Parecon faces a barrier of the most fundamental obstacles. Parecon does not deny the commodity economy and human labour is a commodity in that economy. Not only the elimination of wage labour, but the elimination of any type of exchange of products based on the socially necessary labour inherent in them is the prerequisite and basic condition for the creation of a collective or socialist economy corresponding to the abolition of private property and the existence of classes. Capital is a social relationship, not a handful of tools, money, wealth, machinery and raw materials that, if we take their ownership from individuals and hand them over to the members of a cooperative, the basis of their being capital is eliminated and the capitalist relationship of ownership over them disappears. Marx’s statement in this regard is very instructive: “The factor of direct participation of labour [i.e., the labour of each person] in the general chain of production is the collective nature of labour, which also determines the distribution of products. It is this collective nature of production that gives the product of production a general and collective nature. Therefore, the exchange that takes place at the beginning of production does not concern values, but rather specific activities and collective needs and goals that completely require the participation of the individual in the collective world of products. While in the system of exchange values it is exchange that gives labour a general nature, in the collective system the generality of labour precedes exchange” (Grundrisse, vol. 1).
Parecon is a very chaotic and contradictory utopian concoction in which everything is found, wage labour, commodity economy and distribution of social facilities based on the amount of work of each person in a society that is supposed to be classless, and capitalist property has been completely abolished!!! Michael Albert tries very humanely to distinguish his economic model from what existed in the Eastern Bloc, so that state ownership and the dominant position of individuals or institutions over the working and living conditions of workers do not replace private ownership of capital. He does all these sealings but does not take any serious look at the contradiction between these expectations and the existence of wage labour and commodity economy. What guaranteed the survival and growth and increasing strength and power of capitalism in the former Soviet camp from the very beginning was not the lack of good intentions nor the evil of people like Stalin, but the survival of wage labour and the increasing self-expansion of the relationship of buying and selling labour power. In the Parecon, the exchange of products in the form of goods and wage labour still exists, and this deeply questions the basis of human participation in the production of social products with the aim of responding to public needs and their fundamental break with the priority of exchange over the universality of labour. A person who is supposed to receive wages for work cannot play the role of an active member of a society whose entire process of work and production is supposed to be in line with meeting the subsistence, welfare, and social needs and the free and sublime development of all human beings. The survival of wage labour and the exchange of products as commodities is the material basis for the fall of wage earners from the possibility of free, creative, and equal involvement in the planning of labour and social production. The fact that these people are members of a cooperative and have a say in the structure of this cooperative, commenting on what is produced and what is not produced, and the nature of these rights, in no way solves the fundamental problem of their slavery to the product of their labour.
The fourth characteristic of the Parecon is its demarcation with the existence of “regulated markets.” Michael Albert does not reject the basis of exchange of products, but he does have serious criticisms of the current system of markets. “Markets are as inadequate as central planning, and it is even more important to consider them as problematic. Markets in the world generally gain approval, even from the left.” He enumerates the basic drawbacks of markets as follows.
“First, markets destroy the concept of wages, because they pay for how much is produced or how powerful the individual is, and have nothing to do with how hard the work is. “Second, markets become buyers and sellers, forcing them to buy cheap and sell high.” “Third, markets are interested in creating dissatisfaction, because they only buy when they are dissatisfied, and they buy again, and again, as General Motors Research Laboratory Director Charles Kettering put it, companies must create dissatisfied consumers.” “Fourth, markets set false prices for transnational actions, considering only their immediate impact on the buyer and seller, but never considering what pollution occurs as a result of production.”
Parecon departs from the common market system, or as Michael Albert puts it, “regulated markets” because wages here are not based on the time people work, but on the amount of production during the working time!! In these markets, goods are bought cheaply and sold at high prices, the owners of goods try to stir up customer dissatisfaction and thereby pave the way for new products or attract customers from other companies, and finally, in these markets, there is a tendency to mass concentration of goods, without considering the environmental benefits and the consequences of excessive production. In this way, Parecon has no objection to the existence of the market as a platform for the circulation of goods, and cannot have any, because it has already taken the commodity nature of labour and the products of human labour for granted. What Parecon abhors is simply the inhuman and immoral issues that are evident in regulated markets. How Michael Albert plans the buying and selling of labour and the exchange of human labour products without markets is a very mysterious matter that can only be considered an ambiguity alongside the many ambiguities of his participatory economic models. To summarize this topic. Parecon ‘s theorist is truly a free and idealistic human being. He loves the liberation of humanity from the misery and suffering of the inhuman capitalist system. He is fascinated by replacing the existing situation with a non-capitalist alternative, but he is unfortunately unable to cross the boundaries of capitalist existence and therefore seeks to realize his great human ideals within the existence and survival of this system. Michael Albert is plagued by huge and insoluble contradictions in his collaborative economic model. He refuses to abolish wage labour, but he wants to end the separation of production planning from the process of material realization of labour and production!! He both wants the product of human labour to be a commodity and at the same time calls for the abolition of regulated markets, accepts wage labour and demands the abolition of the separation of producers from the product of their labour and production!! He is silent on the fate of the state and the necessity of abolishing the state over people and speaks of ending the existence of decision-making forces beyond the process of labour and life. Parecon is neither a prospect of liberation from the wage slaves of capital nor an alternative to capitalism for the working class, but rather a contradictory, illusory, and misleading utopia.
Model of cooperative economy and class struggle
Michael Albert has presented the Parecon plan because the famous economist John Maynard Keynes, while emphasizing that capitalism is not successful and not intelligent and not fair and hateful, has expressed his despair and doubt in finding a social alternative for it. With the aim of overcoming this weakness, Albert organizes and plans the collaborative economy model, and then sometimes receives an award from the president of Italy and speaks in detail about proving the authenticity of Parecon. In this way, Albert states, perhaps without realizing it, that Parecon is really the ideas and principles that a global reformer discovered or invented, and this is exactly the opposite of Marx’s account of communism as a social alternative of the conscious working class to the capitalist system. Marx’s words were that “communism is not the ideas and principles that a world reformer discovered or invented.” These theories are only general expressions of the real relations of the current class struggle and that historical movement that is going on before our eyes” (Marx’s Communist Manifesto) Michael Albert does not get many points with Parecon ‘s plan compared to John Maynard Keynes. Both rightly express their hatred of capitalism. The latter has failed in his search for an alternative to this system, and the former has invented and painted this alternative for himself in the depths of his mind. The theorist of the participatory economic model stands next to Keynes in the real world and outside of his own intellectual and subjectively satisfying assumptions without any advantages. He too has nothing, but a beautiful form of imagination and a handful of innovations based on pure human hatred of capitalism. The social alternative to capitalism is, before everything and much more fundamentally than anything, a current, transparent and living class movement. Without this movement, any alternative, model, plan or design, however beautiful and humane, will be just a handful of utopias and toys. “Communism for us is not a state of affairs to be established, not an ideal to which reality must adapt itself. We call communism that real movement which abolishes the present state of affairs. The conditions of this movement result from the assumptions that already exist” (Marx, The German Ideology). The problem of humanity under the pressure of exploitation, oppression, barbarism and crime of capitalism is absolutely not a lack of models and ideas, the real and fundamental problem is the organization of a definite class movement, the abolition of wage slavery being the agenda of its day-to-day and second-to-second current life. The alternative to the existing objectivity is an objective class-conscious movement, something that cannot and should not be replaced by the theoretical scaffolding of an economic model. Anyone who rightly and based on pure human feelings hates capitalism must channel all his human hatred and criticism of this system into the process of unification, awareness, organization and the rise to power of the anti-capitalist movement for the abolition of wage labour. Michael Albert not only does not say a word about this movement and the wage-earning class as the social and class force that constitutes it, but he also has no faith in the role of this class and in the anti-capitalist movement of the workers of the world, and fundamentally in the class nature of the struggle against capitalism, and above all in the basis of class struggle. In one corner of his argument, he states that: “The fighters against slavery, the people who are fighting for women’s right to vote, the union organizers, the anti-apartheid activists, all those who are striving for freedom and dignity, are among our heroes.” He makes this statement right at the point where he is about to issue a call for a general mobilization to hold a Parecon!!!
The theoretician of the cooperative economy model does not believe in class struggle in general and in the process, content and type of alignment of this struggle in capitalist society in particular. Communism is certainly a manifesto addressed to humanity, but communism is a real anti-wage movement to eradicate the wage labour of the working-class masses. With the good and egalitarian intentions of Nelson Mandela and the women’s suffrage movement or popular anti-imperialism and disbanded unions in right-wing reformism and capital’s command, it is not possible to fight against the existence of wage slavery and destroy it. Communism as an alternative of the working class to capitalism is a class-conscious and nationwide movement that achieves victory. This movement flows in the workers’ day struggle for wages, in the protest of the working class against the exploitation and double disenfranchisement of women, in the struggle of the working masses against child labour, in their struggle against environmental pollution, in their struggle against dictatorship and suffocation, or to obtain political and social freedoms, and in all realms of social life. This is a broad, nationwide, international and class movement that must become more aware and more aware, united and united again, with more horizons, more organized and stronger, it must overthrow the bourgeois government, it must develop every section of its struggle into a bulwark against the basis of capitalism and finally eliminate wage slavery. The alternative economic and social model for the capitalist system can only be the content and fabric of life of such a movement.
In the last part of this short article, I must remind you that Michael Albert’s model of the participatory economy, while carrying a world of chaos and contradiction, has a kind of metaphysical coherence and harmony in the system of thought and the structure of his beliefs. His type of criticism of capitalism, his alternative to the wage slavery system, and the solutions and ways to realize this model all come together and become organic in the depths of a pure idealistic mentality. His understanding of the mode of production of capitalism is cognitively alien to the material understanding of history. His critique of capitalism is a reformist critique that aims to purify the existing objectivity from some of the acute pains and sufferings of capitalist society, and finally, the social forces are the addressees of his call to establish a park for all reformed people and people of good intentions. Michael Albert’s model of the participatory economy has no connection whatsoever with the working class and the international labour movement, with the explanation of the proletariat aware of the capitalist mode of production, and with the process of class struggle to eliminate capitalism. For all these reasons, Parecon is just a utopia, and the utopian plan at the beginning of the 21st century is not an aid to the world’s working class in the struggle against capitalism, but an attempt to further separate its class movement from the general front of the campaign against the basis of wage labour and for the abolition of wage slavery.
15 / 5 / 2006