The Political Economy of Participatory Economics

Rating:
Summary: I will, I won't, decide my indecision.
Review: I buy a product because I find it useful and if someone makes something better then I spend my money on that instead. There's a simplicity to that system I can understand. Instead, these guys say classlessness is more important, so dump the market and have a committee of self managing workers decide on the product's worth and then mediate and refine their desires in the light of feedback by other committees taking into account issues of classlessness, race and environmental impact. Pay will be decided on the basis of who has made the most effort and sacrifice in making the product. As far as books are concerned, the committee of self participatory workers will decide the worth of the book and whether or not it is worth making the neccessary sacrifice to make the book and then presumably send it to the printers so they can have a meeting as to whether they wish to participate in printing the book and send back their imput as to their desires and the commitee will have another participatory self managing meeting to take this into account and come to a mutually beneficial agreement on whether or not to proceed. This simpler system falls apart over one unanswerable question. What the hell are we going to do about Oliver Stone?

Rating:
Summary: A key text defining an alternative to capitalism.
Review: Is there an alternative to the exploitation,
boss domination, environmental havoc, dog-eat-dog
competition and other
ills of capitalism? "Well Soviet central
planning was tried and that failed," you say?
Hahnel and Albert argue that there is a third
alternative -- Participatory Economics or
ParEcon. (The other reviewer's description of
ParEcon is an inaccurate caricature.)
This book provides a concise introduction to
an economic model that is neither Soviet-style
central-planning nor based on the market. The
critique of both markets and central planning is
written clearly. At the same time, this book
contains formal proofs of the economic adequacy
of their model, and is therefore, in parts,
more technical than most of Albert and Hahnel's other
little books like "Moving Forward."

Rating:
Summary: A key text defining an alternative to capitalism.
Review: Is there an alternative to the exploitation,
boss domination, environmental havoc, dog-eat-dog
competition and other
ills of capitalism? "Well Soviet central
planning was tried and that failed," you say?
Hahnel and Albert argue that there is a third
alternative -- Participatory Economics or
ParEcon. (The other reviewer's description of
ParEcon is an inaccurate caricature.)
This book provides a concise introduction to
an economic model that is neither Soviet-style
central-planning nor based on the market. The
critique of both markets and central planning is
written clearly. At the same time, this book
contains formal proofs of the economic adequacy
of their model, and is therefore, in parts,
more technical than most of Albert and Hahnel's other
little books like "Moving Forward."