ParEcon

Resources
The Book 'Parecon: Life After Capitalism' is now available online in HTML format, for those who can't afford to purchase it.

ParPolity a working theory for a system of direct participatory politics by Stephen Solomon.

Projects for a Participatory Society including ideas on participatory kinship, education and politics.

NEW BOOK -- Realizing Hope: Life Beyond Capitalism

Capitalism vs. ParEcon a new web site that investigates, assesses, and compares the two economies.

Comments on ParEcon

~Noam Chomsky (Linguist, Dissident Writer)

“There is enormous dissatisfaction, worldwide, with prevailing socioeconomic conditions and the choices imposed by the reigning institutions. Calls for change range from patchwork reform to more far-reaching changes. Michael Albert's work on participatory economics outlines in substantial detail a program of radical reconstruction, presenting a vision that draws from a rich tradition of thought and practice of the libertarian left and popular movements, but adding novel critical analysis and specific ideas and modes of implementation for constructive alternatives. It merits close attention, debate, and action.”

~Arundahti Roy (Dissident Writer)

"The structure of capitalism is flawed. The motor that powers it cannot but vastly increase the disparity between the poor and the rich globally and within countries as well. Parecon is a brave argument for replacing that flawed machine and offers a much needed -- more equitable, democratic, participatory -- alternative economic vision."

~Howard Zinn (Dissident Historian, Writer)

“I can't count the number of times when serious critics of our social system would say to me: ‘Why can't we come up with a vision of what a good society would be like?’ This is what Mike Albert boldly does in Parecon: Life After Capitalism, and the result is an imaginative, carefully reasoned description, persistently provocative, of how we might live free from economic injustice.”

~Andrej Grubacic (Historian and political activist Serbo-Croat translator of Parecon

“Transition from capitalism to a more desirable economy, especially in Eastern Europe, will come to pass only after more sweat and tears have flowed in more campaigns on more fronts than we can yet imagine. Parecon, as a model which acknowledges all the merits and all the debits of a Soviet system, Eastern European experience, and Yugoslav experiment, is, in my opinion, extremely important for its attempt to formulate a coherent anti-authoritarian, left libertarian economic vision. Parecon seems to me to be an anarchist economic vision which adds detail and depth via its attention to the specific positive economic institutions not previously clearly advocated by anarchists – perhaps most notably balanced job complexes and participatory planning.”

~Stephen R. Shalom (editor Socialist Visions)

"Left proposals for change have so often been either minor tinkerings with current horrors or the vaguest of imaginings that dissolve on close examination. Participatory economic -- Parecon --has avoided both these dangers: it is a hard-headed, carefully thought-out proposal for far-reaching and fundamental change. In this volume, Michael Albert elaborates the model and provides compelling responses to criticisms. Anyone who knows we need a new world ought to give this book serious attention."

~Adele Oliveri (Economist and political activist Italian translator of Parecon)

“If we are to convince people to join the growing worldwide struggle for global justice, we must be able to offer them a glimpse into what our desired future society might look like. Parecon takes economic vision out of the realm of academic journals and throws it right in the middle of the activism arena, showing us how we can build from the bottom up a set of consumption, production and allocation institutions that foster equity, diversity, solidarity, participation and self-management. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and definitely recommend it to anyone who is serious about winning the hearts and minds of the undecided to the cause of our common effort to build a more humane world.”

~Ezequiel Adamovsky (Activist)

"I believe the Argentinean social movements that are trying to build alternatives to capitalist irrationality --such as the barter markets, piquetero productive projects, workers self-managed factories, independent distribution centers, etc.-- will surely find inspiration in Michael Albert's book. Will the future be exactly as he envisions it? That's not the question. What matters is that Parecon helps us imagine how we can organize society after we get rid of capitalism. Parecon makes utopia look feasible."

~Carl Boggs (Author, Social Movements and Political Power)

“In Parecon, Michael Albert has built extensively and creatively upon his earlier work on participatory economics and democratic politics understood in the most radical, transformative sense. What he provides is nothing less than an urgent agenda for the twenty-first century, one that would move us toward the kind of collective empowerment, deep citizenship, and civic engagement needed to reverse the present slide toward barbarism. The model Albert proposes and so convincingly articulates goes well beyond failed systems of the past – market capitalism, the command economy, social democracy – while also pointing toward a much needed alternative to the present-day ravages of capitalist globalization. More than a discourse on economics, the book offers a broad vision of radical transformation grounded in the very best elements of previous emancipatory theories and movements. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in fundamental social change.”

~Robert W. McChesney (Co-editor, Monthly Review)

“There is no more important issue facing humanity than imagining and putting into place a post-capitalist economy, based upon democratic principles and humane values. It has been all but obliterated in recent times due to the dreadful nature of the Soviet communist experience, and, far more important, the hatred of our ruling elite for any notion that there can be an alternative to the status quo. It is to Michael Albert's everlasting credit that he has worked tirelessly to grapple with the very difficult questions of what a truly democratic economy might look like, and how it might work. I strongly recommend Parecon: Life After Capitalism as a mandatory entry point for such a discussion, the importance of which becomes more apparent every day. It is a discussion that cannot be postponed any longer. Albert's thoughtful contribution deserves everyone's attention.”

~Ben Bagdikian (Author, Media Monopoly)

“As the gap between rich and poor widens in the world, including in the United States, Michael Albert has offered an alternative system of participatory economics to end the dehumanizing failures and injustices of free market capitalism. It is a compelling book for our times.”

~Saul Landau (Transnational Institute Fellow)

“To those who tend to lose hope over how the current economic system treats human beings and creates poverty, this book offers ways new ways of thinking about the future, about an economy based on reason and human rights. To the pressing problems of the world, it provides imagination and vision at a time when economic leaders repeat platitudes.”

~Milan Rai (Author, War Plan Iraq)

“Parecon is a major contribution to deepening our understanding of the present order, and contains valuable insights to guide our attempts to replace capitalist society with a more humane and just alternative.”

~Paul Street (Leading Researcher Chicago Urban League)

“Those who dissent from the status quo are continually faced with a significant question that is often asked with hostile intent: ‘So what's your solution?’ Contrary to some left opinion, the question is not inherently a method of suppressing or ridiculing dissent and the struggle to answer it is not an inherently dogmatic or reformist. The failure to provide or even attempt solid answers is arguably a great moral and intellectual failure of the left, especially in a time when existing political-economic arrangements so clearly threaten human survival. I know of no one who has worked more effectively to answer the question in at once flexible, democratic, and radical fashion than Mike Albert in his Parecon: Life After Capitalism. It is must reading for those who sense the left's urgent need to supplement criticism with an inspiring and practical vision of how the world might be put on solid, democratic, and sustainable ground.”

~Danny Schechter (Executive editor, Globalvision's Mediachannel.org)

“While others still cling to their hopes for participatory democracy, Michael Albert goes further into the uncharted but visionary waters of participatory economics. His idea will provoke you even as his writing makes complex arguments accessible and actionable. Is Pareconfeasible? Ask yourself: does what we have now really work? (and for whom?)”

~David Cromwell (Co-editor, MediaLens.org, author, Private Planet)

“Parecon is a powerful rebuttal to those who claim that capitalism is the best (or only) system of economics that humanity can devise: a self-serving claim made, of course, by those privileged elites who benefit most from the current inequitable system of global capitalism, or those whose imagination and freedom have been bludgeoned by the propaganda system that supports, and is an intrinsic part of, that same system. With this major new book, Michael Albert cogently argues that economics can be made to work for the greater good of people and the planet.”

~Cynthia Peters (Writer, activist, and member of SEIU Local 285)

"As an organizer, writer, and union-based educator, there is a certain refrain I hear over and over again. That is, `Why bother struggling for social change? We can't really do any better than this.' Too often our reply is simply that `another world is possible.' But we don't say what might this world look like. How would we design institutions? How would we structure society? These are reasonable questions, and progressives lose credibility when we have no real answers. Michael Albert's (and Robin Hahnel's) conception of a participatory economy (parecon) offers a detailed vision of how we might organize production, consumption, remuneration and distribution in ways that foster the values we believe in, such as justice and solidarity. Albert gives us what we need to imagine and debate what `another world' would look like. But he also gives us tools that we could use today. For example, he offers concrete ideas about workplace organization, including balanced job complexes and remuneration based on effort. These principles could be implemented in our own progressive institutions -- many of which have structures that replicate class, race, and gender hierarchies. Albert's writing is clear, and his case for parecon has been fine-tuned by many years' experience writing and speaking about the topic. This is an important book, not just because it does economic vision so well and so credibly, but because it is a model for all the vision work that needs to be done. How would we conceptualize gender in a better world? What about race, ethnicity, community, sexuality, the family, justice, political participation, and religion? Parecon should help launch the study of these questions and more! The people I talk to in my work and in my organizing understand plenty about what's wrong, but they have little sense of what could be. Parecon is the most serious effort I have seen to date to shift our thinking towards asking and answering the question: What would a better world look like? Read this book. Consider, debate and expand on these ideas. And then start integrating vision into your own activism. Another world is indeed possible, but not unless we put some effort into figuring out how it would work."