RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 327 Unifying Nine Economic Visions for a Post-Capitalist World
Episode 327 of RevolutionZ takes up the question, can nine different post-capitalist economic visions find common ground in a single unifying framework?
Rather than viewing Mainstream Marxist Economy, Councilist Marxist Economy, Anarchist Economy, Solidarity Economy, Green Economy, Degrowth Economy, Feminist Economy, Intercommunalist Economy, and Anti-authoritarian Economy as competing frameworks, what if we highlight their essential virtues to identify areas of compatibility?
At the heart of this unification project lies Participatory Economics—a vision featuring a productive commons instead of private ownership, self-managing councils intest of top down authority, balanced job complexes instead of a corporate division of labor, equitable remuneration instead of profit seeking exploitation, and participatory planning instead of markets or central planning. Can this tenth perspective satisfy the core demands of the nine other approaches while violating none of their essential principles?
Each perspective contributes vital elements to a comprehensive economic vision: from eliminating capitalist class domination and preventing coordinator class rule to ensuring environmental sustainability, fostering solidarity, and preventing systemic disadvantages based on identity or community. What emerges is a synthesis that strengthens rather than dilutes each perspective's most valuable insights.
For activists and thinkers seeking both a defensive strategy against authoritarian capitalism and a positive vision ultimately win, does this synthesis offer a promising path forward? Can the left unite behind a shared economic vision that honors its diverse traditions while providing practical, revolutionary alternatives? That is our focus and challenge this episode.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 327th consecutive episode and this time I will try to not even say the word Trump or I will try to not say it again, I guess or too often so as to have a brief break in my many-month focus on his immediate pursuits and our possible resistance. Focus on his immediate pursuits and our possible resistance, but please understand this doesn't mean that Trump, trumpism and fascism and their roots, their impact and especially our growing resistance and how to aid it, are not on my mind and Revolution Z's primary current agenda. They remain forefront. That is traitorous, treacherous. Trump remains public enemy number one, of course, along with his sidekick, moneybags Musk and the rest of his enabling and cowardly cabinet, congressional and judicial supporters. And resistance in all its multifold forms, from conversations to demonstrations and from disobedience to disruption, is still where current hope and potential and a path out of current crises and to a better society and a better world reside, and thus where energy needs to go. So, even as I take a brief break from our full-on focus on fighting Trump, I still have that first in mind. It still pummels my feelings and guides my choices. So the title of this episode is Bringing Together Economic Visions. And since current resistance needs two components, one component defensive, to protect against and reverse and prevent Trump's agenda defensive, to protect against and reverse and prevent Trump's agenda. And the other, positive, to become an offense to win better and not just to avoid worse. Well, this episode aims to contribute, albeit over the long haul, to that latter positive component. It is titled Bringing Together Economic Visions.
Speaker 1:So, to start, we can all list many perspectives that propose different post-capitalist economic aims. Must we see each such perspective as a contender against the rest? What if they have compatible aims? Could we try to combine their primary virtues into one encompassing perspective? Would an encompassing perspective be able to fulfill all our main desires? Could an encompassing perspective attain practical viability and include only worthy features? Inspired by that hope, I will here very briefly summarize nine currently contending economic perspectives and then propose a tenth composite perspective, conceived to bridge divisions and establish links among the nine others. Note, however, that this is only going to address post-capitalist economics. One could also consider post-racist, post-sexist, post-authoritarian and post-unsustainable societal components. To similarly, seek unanticipated but welcome synergy among contending perspectives. If economic perspectives can unify, perhaps perspectives for other aspects of life and then for a summation of all aspects, can also unify. Here then are the main assertions of nine economic perspectives that often contend with one another rather than unifying with one another.
Speaker 1:1. Mainstream Marxist Economy or MME. This view mainly seeks to eliminate private ownership of the means of production, to in turn eliminate an owning capitalist class that accrues profits and decides outcomes. Mme's advocates differ over what to do with liberated means of production, make asset ownership statist, deliver ownership of each workplace to its workers Institute of productive commons. Despite those differences, mme's advocates agree on the overall goal End class rule by capitalists so that workers can control their own circumstances and benefit from their own efforts. Beyond that, for allocation, some MME advocates propose central planning, others propose markets. But MME advocates agree that allocation should provide workers and consumers control over worthy outcomes.
Speaker 1:2. Counselist Marxist Economy CME extends from Anton Panikak to Rosa Luxemburg, to Cornelius Castoriadis and beyond. Cme wants workers' councils to propose and decide workplace policies. It wants consumers' councils to propose and decide individual and collective consumption. Some CME advocates say that such decisions should always be made by majority vote. Other CME advocates say actors should decide outcomes in proportion to the degree that outcomes affect them. This could be by majority vote, by consensus or by whatever else works. Cme wants allocation to achieve sought ends without wasting valued assets and to be self-managed. For that reason, cme typically rejects central planning and markets and seeks a decentralized alternative.
Speaker 1:3. Anarchist Economy, or AE, stretches from Bakunin through Kropotkin to Goldman, to anarcho-syndicalism and more recently to Chomsky. Ae rejects private ownership of means of production and all authoritarianism. It typically proposes a productive commons and council self-management. It recognizes the need for different voting methods and styles of deliberation in different situations. Voting methods and styles of deliberation in different situations In particular, beyond all that, it adds to our emerging mix of desirable aims and insight that there is a third class, which Bakunin initially called intellectuals, which Barber and John Ehrenreich much later called the professional managerial class and which I and Robin Hanell mere moments later called the professional managerial class and which I and Robin Hanell mere moments later called the coordinator class, but which all agree has the capacity to become a ruling class that operates over and above workers. Ae seeks worthy production and consumption self-managed by those affected. Thus AE rejects class rule. It adds to our emerging menu of aims that we should eliminate the division of employees into an empowered class that rises to rule a disempowered class.
Speaker 1:4. Solidarity Economy, or SE, sees itself as an umbrella term more than a specific vision. It asks do people mutually benefit one another as compared to advancing at one another's expense? Se's aim is that workers and consumers should have mutual concern and shared interests as to how precisely to achieve such aims. Se is highly diverse, with much under its umbrella to achieve such aims. Se is highly diverse, with much under its umbrella, but all its arrangements seek that actors move away from antagonism and toward solidarity. Se rejects that some benefit at the expense of others. It wants all to enjoy mutual benefit. It implicitly favors approaches that propel solidarity without undue detriments. It implicitly rejects approaches which obstruct solidarity, including class division and top-down or competitive zero-sum allocation. It explicitly adds achieving solidarity to our emerging menu of aims.
Speaker 1:5. Green economy, or GE, also has many versions, but they all agree that economic life should be sustainable and should occur in reciprocity with environmental relations. Suppose some sector of production uses more of some critical resource than the environment or people are able to replace or substitute for each year. Clearly that research will, in time, run out. Similarly, suppose a sector produces some byproduct that despoils the environment in a destructive manner that we can't reduce or mitigate each year. Clearly that despoilation can become unendurable. Ge seeks institutions that account for reduction of needed inputs and profusion of harmful outputs. It favors institutions that facilitate environmental reciprocity. It rejects institutions that obstruct environmental reciprocity. Advocates of GE differ about how to accomplish their aims, but most agree that old economic forms of property ownership, decision-making and allocation are decidedly unecological.
Speaker 1:6. Degrowth Economy DGE is a GE that determines that current use of irreplaceable resources and current output of damaging materials are, in sum, already too great to continue. Dge advises up front that some amount of current economic activity is unsustainable and highly unlikely to become sustainable by way of technological or social innovations. Dge urges that unsustainable industries need to quote degrow. Degrowth advocates differ considerably over what we need to cut back by how much, but they agree that democratic decision-making should inform such choices. Dge also typically advocates that the choices should decolonize and pursue equity. It follows that a DGE like a GE adds to our encompassing agenda the need for production choices to properly judge sustainability and either what investment and correctives to make or what degrowth to undertake.
Speaker 1:7. Feminist Economy, or FE, looks at economic activity from the angle of kinship. It makes two primary additions to our agenda regarding specifically economic aims. 1. Economic life must not produce systemic differences in costs or benefits due to sex, gender or any other kinship-related attribute. Two economic life must respect, accommodate and certainly not subvert additional implications of feminist social change, including insights and changes in home life and sexual preferences and practices in relations of parents and children and in the implications of caring activity on those who undertake it, including altered conceptions about who that should be. 8. Intercommunalist economy, or IE, looks at economic activity from the angle of cultural constituencies. It, too, makes two primary additions regarding specifically economic aims. One economic life must not produce systemic differences in costs or benefits due to race, ethnicity, religion or any other community-related attribute. Two economic life must respect, accommodate and certainly not subvert additional implications of intercommunalist social change, including, in particular, insights and changes regarding mutual relations of cultural communities and their borders, and especially innovations regarding protection of all cultural communities from domination or negation by any others.
Speaker 1:9. Anti-authoritarian Economy AAE looks at economic activity from the angle of citizenship and polity. It also makes two primary additions regarding specifically economic aims. 1. Economic life must not produce systemic differences in costs or benefits due to any social or personal attribute that would produce undue political elevation or subordination. 2. Economic life must respect, accommodate and certainly not subvert additional implications of political social change, including, in particular, politically mandated rights, responsibilities and procedures.
Speaker 1:Okay, even offered as ridiculously succinctly as above, our set of nine summaries is certainly a mouthful. We can't even pronounce the concatenation of all the abbreviations M-M-E-C-M-E-A-E-S-E-G-E-D-G-E-F-E-I-E-I-A-I. Oops, a-a-e. Should I do the whole thing again? But our concision in summarizing each perspective's main priorities was not random. We emphasized primary positive desires. We de-emphasized differences over means to attain primary positive desires. Our resulting task propose a unifying perspective that can attain all nine perspectives, central positive desires and avoid features any of the nine perspectives would reject.
Speaker 1:To start to meet the core desires of mainstream Marxists, clearly an encompassing vision will need to eliminate private ownership of productive assets. To that end, an encompassing perspective might propose a productive commons. If society judges perspective produces proposals socially worthy and environmentally viable, they get to use commonly held productive assets to produce socially beneficial products. Next, to attain councilist aims, an encompassing perspective could propose that to self-manage production and consumption, workers and consumers could use suitably conceived venues called councils. Not only the councilist perspective wants workers and consumers to oversee economic life, but so do the rest, supposing that workers and consumers doing so could be shown viable and consistent with each perspective's other aims. However, advocates of each of the nine perspectives might reasonably ask how an encompassing perspective proposes to ensure that workers' and consumers' councils will make informed, wise decisions and consumers' councils will make informed, wise decisions.
Speaker 1:Moving to the anarchists, how might a new perspective encompass AE's aim to eliminate an empowered class that rules over workers? How might it ensure that workers are well-equipped to intelligently self-manage, since a key factor bearing on this aim is the empowerment implications of day-to-day economic involvements? An encompassing perspective might seek conditions that prepare every employee to effectively participate in council deliberations and decisions, while only the anarchist perspective explicitly calls for this. If a new division of labor that delivers equal empowerment to all workers could be shown worthy and viable, it is hard to see why any of the eight other perspectives would oppose it.
Speaker 1:The same calculus applies to attaining solidarity, as emphasized by Essie. Why would a new economy reject actors benefiting mutually instead of actors benefiting only at one another's expense? Thus, an encompassing perspective might urge that production, consumption and allocation should align all actors' interests as much as possible, and certainly not force their interests into debilitating opposition, instead of a rat race where only a few survive while the rest are humbled, subordinated and impoverished. Economic institutions should cause all economic actors to have mainly shared, rather than mainly contrary, interests. A primary step might be to make incomes equitable, so that when I benefit, you don't lose, and vice versa. Another primary step might be to organize decision-making that doesn't resemble a cauldron of contending interests. A third step might be to replace competitive allocation with allocation that unifies participants.
Speaker 1:Next, we have green and degrowth economies. Their positive addition to our growing list of aims is that when workers and consumers determine what to produce and consume, they should take into account environmental as well as personal and social costs and benefits. To this end, an encompassing perspective might propose a new allocation system in place of markets and central planning, because, by analysis of their incentives and logic, we know that markets and central planning establish a drive to accumulate, irrespective of impact on anything other than enlarging profits, while maintaining existing hierarchies of wealth and power. When to reduce or even reverse growth in a sector due to its use of essential resources or due to its production of damaging byproducts, needs to be democratically decided. An economy should therefore reveal potentially mitigating replacements for dwindling resources or develop means to more frugally use them, and should develop means to reduce or remove negative byproducts by way of organizational or technical innovations or, when needed, should degrow equitably. Finally, and of overreaching impact, in accord with the aims of intercommunalist, feminist and anti-authoritarian economy, an encompassing perspective might seek to prevent production or consumption that generate material or power hierarchies of wealth, circumstance or influence. It might simultaneously respect achievements emanating from intersecting kin gender, cultural, communal and political innovations, as each emerge from and are propelled by transformations of those economy-intersecting spheres of life. And, of course, it might treat other economies outwardly in accord with the values it respects and fulfills inwardly.
Speaker 1:The preceding discussion suggests what types of proposals might conceivably propel advocates of each of our nine highlighted perspectives to agree on an encompassing, overarching economic vision. And indeed an existing tenth perspective, called participatory economics, seeks to mature in precisely that direction. Seeks to mature in precisely that direction. Its core economic institutions are a productive commons, workers and consumers, self-managing councils, a new division of labor called balanced job complexes, equitable remuneration for duration, intensity and onerousness of socially valued labor, plus full income for those who can't work and, finally, for allocation, participatory planning in place of markets and central planning. Here are the key aims of the nine perspectives where, for each, we very briefly note how participatory economics might meet them.
Speaker 1:1. Eliminate capitalist class rule. To achieve this, participatory economics replaces private ownership of productive assets with a productive commons from which producers propose to borrow assets to produce socially useful outputs. 2. Institute workers and consumers' councils and federations of councils to self-manage local production and consumption and also larger-scale allocation decisions. Three ensure workers' ability to make informed decisions and eliminate a class of empowered coordinators or a PMC that rules workers from above. To achieve this, participatory economics eliminates the capitalist and the 20th century quote socialist corporate division of labor, which empowers roughly 20% of all producers over roughly 80% of all producers. In its place, participatory economics institutes what it calls balanced job complexes. This constructs jobs as combinations of some empowering and some disempowering tasks, such that each job is comparably empowering to all other jobs. There is no empowered class above disempowered workers. More, all economic actors enjoy daily circumstances that convey information, skills, confidence, disposition and access suitable to intelligent, self-managed decision-making. Four ensure that workers and consumers enjoy solidarity.
Speaker 1:Participatory economics achieves solidarity by three main features. First, income is equitable for all and in no way a function of zero-sum interactions. Your income climbs only for reasons of duration, intensity or onerousness of your socially worthy work. This does not disadvantage anyone. Nor does income climb so high for anyone as to cause invidious comparison. When you get more, you deserve it Also. A person's income climbs when everyone's income climbs. Second, your say over decisions is like everyone else's say over decisions. All abide by the same self-managing norm. Likewise, in participatory economics, actors determine and express their own preferences in accord with and informed by others' preferences. Actors seek an overall outcome in light of consequences for self and for others, rather than seek a solely personal outcome regardless of implications for others.
Speaker 1:5. Properly account for environmental effects of economic choices, including, when necessary, invest in sustainable means to accomplish desired production and consumption or, when necessary, degrow unsustainable industries. To achieve this, participatory economics utilizes participatory planning to account for environmental effects as well. A participatory economy can non-disruptively accommodate ecological innovations and policies conceived and decided beyond the economy innovations and policies conceived and decided beyond the economy. 6. Do not allow for systemic material or influence advantages by kin, gender, age, sexual identity, race, ethnicity, nation or other cultural differentiation. Respect extra-economic aims, as urged by feminist, intercommunalist and anti-authoritarian economics. Participatory economics achieves all this by the simple fact that in it, no constituency can have systemic, material or influential advantage, because all income is equitable and all decision-making is self-managed To abide more subtle, complex or other innovations bearing on kinship, culture and political innovations. A participatory economy within a society must intersect with other realms consistently and the only aspects of a participatory economy that could interfere with that are its virtues regarding economic income. That are its virtues regarding economic income, circumstances and degree of decision-making say.
Speaker 1:I won't claim that this short commentary proves participatory economics can be a unifying tenth perspective for the other nine that I mentioned. I will claim, however, that it makes sufficient moves in that direction so that if you think having a unifying economic vision would benefit anti-capitalist activism, then perhaps you might also agree that it is worth working to arrive at an encompassing perspective. One step might be to more comprehensively display, debate and explore the ten approaches to economic vision offered here, with a guiding hope to promote greater unity in place of proliferating contentiousness. Does participatory economics encompass? That is for you and time to decide, but what I would like to suggest is that it is worth considering. One way to start might be for advocates of any of the first nine approaches to indicate, if it is in their view the case, how, if at all, the tenth participatory economics would prevent or impede or even just not facilitate the positive aims of the rest? Which feature, if any, of participatory economics would need to be removed for it to be welcoming as an encompassing vision not violating any aims of the rest? What missing feature would need to be added to facilitate some aim of any of the rest that would otherwise go unattained?
Speaker 1:Participatory economics has been around now a long time. Its attributes, the institutions it requires or is defined by, are explicitly specifically offered, as excessively of advocates have been able to achieve. Does having an economic vision for life after capitalism matter? Would being able to simultaneously achieve the positive concerns of the nine mentioned perspectives while violating none of them matter? If so, would institutional feature core to participatory economics a productive commons, self-managing councils, balanced job complexes, equitable remuneration or participatory planning would violate something one or more other economic visionary approaches desires to attain, which would even just fail to sufficiently facilitate and establish any desired aim of some other visionary approach. Dare I suggest if one or more defining features of participatory economics would have unwanted effects or impede desired effects, it should be relatively straightforward to indicate how. On the other hand, if none of the defining features impose unwanted outcomes or block or even just fail to attain desired outcomes, then isn't that a quite strong case that the 10th economic vision, participatory economics, can bring together the other nine, and wouldn't that be a good thing?
Speaker 1:That said, this is Michael Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z.
Speaker 1:Thank you, let me get a hair personal about it before ending.
Speaker 1:This has been something that I've worked on with Robin Hanell and a number of other people as well, for well decades.
Speaker 1:It's a vision meant to provide a degree of unity and shared focus, shared aims regarding getting beyond capitalism, and it has been the case that, while there have been criticisms of it on occasion, none of those have seemed perhaps we're obstinate, or perhaps we're right particularly important or particularly compelling or particularly convincing, at least to us, and few of them have been made in even remotely like the context that I've suggested here in this episode of Revolution Z, that is, they haven't taken the existing alternative visions, nine of which I mentioned, and tried to show how there's something that somebody on the left who's anti-capitalist wants that participatory economics doesn't deliver, or that there's something that participatory economics does deliver which would be adverse to someone on the left who is anti-capitalist.
Speaker 1:If those two things can't be shown and I don't think they have ever been shown. But if they can't be shown, then it seems to me that we all ought to get on about trying to see whether or not we can get together compared to each perspective more or less defending itself in isolation from the insights of the rest. And all that said, this is Mike Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z.