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Post-Capitalist Alternatives Post-Capitalist Alternatives Post-Capitalist Alternatives: ISBN: 978-0-9813213-2-5 Ethan Miller and Michael Albert, Post-Capitalist Alternatives: New Perspectives on Economic Democracy (London, ON, Canada: Socialist New Perspectives on Renewal Publishing Project, 2009) Economic Democracy Licenced under a Creative Commons “attribution, non-commercial, no derivative works” 2.5 Canada licence. Post-Capitalist Alternatives: New Perspectives on Economic Democracy has been edited, published, printed and distributed by the Socialist Renewal Publishing Project. The Project is an independent, anti-capitalist community-service initiative. It offers free literature relevant to the theme of socialist renewal, aimed at an audience of anti-racist, pro-feminist, anti- capitalist activists, especially within the Canadian state. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Ethan Miller’s articles are republished from the website of Grassroots Economic Organizing (geo.coop), as allowed by their creative commons licence. Michael Albert’s articles are reprinted from the ZNet website (zmag.org/znet) by the author’s permission. We extend our thanks to both the authors and to these web sites for allowing this non- commercial reprinting. This material is offered here for non-commercial use only, in order to promote anti-racist, pro-feminist, anti-capitalist activism. SOCIALIST RENEWAL PUBLISHING PROJECT: Ethan Miller and Michael Albert Via Email: [email protected] Four recent contributions to an urgently necessary discussion: Via the Web: http://socialist-renewal.blogspot.com how can we think about, and begin to build, sustainable, democratic and egalitarian alternatives to capitalism? Via Mail: S.R.P.P. Unit 206 – 527 Talbot Street London, Ontario, Canada | Socialist Renewal Publishing Project | N6A 2T2 1 Post-Capitalist Alternatives Post-Capitalist Alternatives Life After Capitalism – And Now, Too Michael Albert TABLE OF CONTENTS: Why have my frequent co-author Robin Hahnel and I devoted 1. Michael Albert, “Life After Capitalism – and Now, Too”……....…3 great time and energy to developing, describing, and now advocating an economic model to replace capitalism? What are the model's features? How 2. Ethan Miller, “Our Eyes on the Prize: From a ‘Worker Co-op does it differ from other models. And what are its immediate implications? Movement’ to a Transformative Social Movement”.…………...12 We address economic vision because in the words of the great economist John Maynard Keynes: "[Capitalism] is not a success. It is not 3. Ethan Miller, “Other Economies Are Possible: Building a intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous -- and it doesn't Solidarity Economy”…………… …………………………..……..16 deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed." 4. Michael Albert, “Solidarity and Participatory Economics”…..…23 We address economic vision to undo that perplexity. Capitalism is theft. The harsh and subservient labors of most citizens fantastically enrich a few others who don't have to labor at all. In general, those who work longer and harder get less. Those who work less long and less hard get more. On the upper West Side of New York City, barely a mile apart exist neighborhoods in which the average disposable income is on the poorer side about $5,000 per year and on the richer side about $500,000 per year. The richest people in the U.S. are worth more than the populations of whole countries. The poorest people in the U.S. live under bridges in threadbare cardboard shelters, or stop living at all. This gap is not due to different industriousness or talent. It is due to social relations that force the many to enrich the few. Capitalism is alienation and anti-sociality. Within capitalism the motives guiding decisions are pecuniary not personal, selfish not social. We each seek individual advance at the expense of others. The result, unsurprisingly, is an anti-social environment in which nice guys finish last. In U.S. hospitals, tens of thousands of people a year die of diseases they did not have when they entered. This is in considerable part a matter of hygiene and other correctable problems. Yet there is no massive campaign to save these lives. It would not be profitable. Starvation the world over has the same root cause; to feed the poor sufficiently is not as profitable as over- feeding the rich. What health we attain, what food we eat, what housing we inhabit, comes to us because someone was seeking not health, sustenance, or shelter for all, but profit for themselves. Economic logic seeks profit rather than social well being. Benefits for the weak arise only as a byproduct, not 2 3 Post-Capitalist Alternatives Post-Capitalist Alternatives an intention, and rarely at that. As Keynes put it, "Capitalism is the life, are the most desirable lot of human beings." But what do we want astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest instead? of things for the greatest good of everyone." Participatory Economics, or parecon, is built on four institutional Capitalism is authoritarian. Within capitalism's workplaces those commitments. who labor at rote and tedious jobs have nearly zero say over the conditions, First, in parecon people participate in economic life via nested output, and purpose of their efforts. Those who own or who monopolize workers and consumers councils that repeatedly arise whenever people seek empowering positions have near total say. Not even Stalin controlled when to control their own economies, as most recently in Argentina. The added people could rest, eat, or go to the bathroom, but corporate owners routinely feature of parecon's councils is a commitment to self managed decision exercise such power. Corporations annihilate democracy. making. People should influence decisions in proportion as they are in turn Capitalism is inefficient. Capitalism squanders the productive affected by them. capacities of about 80% of the population by training them primarily to Sometimes self management is best accomplished via one person endure boredom and take orders, not to fulfill their greatest potentials. It one vote and majority rule. Sometimes it entails that a different tally is wastes inordinate resources on producing sales that aren't beneficial, and on needed, or consensus, or that only some segment of the whole populace enforcing work assignments that are coerced and therefore resisted. votes. In parecon, the tallying procedures we use are tactics to attain the Capitalism is racist and sexist. This is not intrinsic to the relations appropriate self managing say for all involved actors. Such self managing of production, but occurs because under the pressure of market competition workers and consumers councils of course bear little resemblance to the top owners inevitably exploit racial and gender hierarchies produced in other down corporate entities we endure today. parts of society. When extra economic factors reduce the bargaining power Second, remuneration in a parecon is for effort and sacrifice, not of some actors and raise that of others or when they impact expectations for output or bargaining power. In a parecon we will earn more if we work about who should rule and who should obey -- seeking profit, capitalists longer, if we work harder, or if we work under more harsh or harmful abide and even enlarge the injustices. conditions. Capitalism is violent. The pursuit of capitalist market domination Parecon rejects someone earning by virtue of having a deed in his produces nations at odds with other nations. Those with sufficient weaponry or her pocket. There is no moral or incentive warrant for that. Parecon also exploit the resources and populations of those lacking means to defend rejects a thuggish economy in which people get what they can take, as in themselves, at times even unleashing unholy war. market exchange. More controversially, parecon also rejects that we should Capitalism is unsustainable. Markets propel short term calculations get back from an economy the amount we contribute to it by our personal and make dumping waste on others to avoid costs an easy and unavoidable labors. road to profit. As a result, money grabbers accumulate and accumulate, How much we produce depends on many factors we can't control: ignoring or willfully obscuring the impact not only on workers and our having better tools, or our working in a more productive environment, or consumers, but also on today's environment and tomorrow's resources. We our producing more valued items, or our having innate qualities that increase see the results in sky, water, and soil, mitigated only by social movements our productivity. Economic incentives need to induce productive labor even that force wiser behavior. when it is onerous. Remuneration for effort and sacrifice makes moral and I could continue detailing the morbid failings of capitalism, but I economic sense. Rewarding the luck of having more productive genes, tools, don't think it's necessary. etc., does not. In 2004 only a relatively few people are made so immoral by their Third, participatory economics needs a new division of labor. If a advantages, or so profoundly ignorant by their advanced educations, or so new economy were to remove private profit, utilize self managing councils, confused by media, that they still fail to see that capitalism is now a gigantic and remunerate effort and sacrifice, but were to simultaneously retain the holocaust of injustice that is anti-human in virtually every respect. current corporate division of labor, its commitments would be inconsistent. As John Stuart Mill put it, "I confess that I am not charmed with Having 20% of the workforce monopolize largely empowering and the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human pleasurable work and leaving 80% with more obedient, rote, stultifying, and beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, onerous work, guarantees that the former group - who I call the coordinator and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social class - will rule over the latter working class.
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