Prologue
We live in a time when social and actual storms abound. They come at us from all directions, but we have no one source of consolidated response even though the consequences are shared. In a world of distributed, new-media communications it is possible to get all hands on the tiller to steer us clear of the storms and to ensure that no one hand uses a lever to trigger a new storm. But where are the systems that allow us to include the perspectives and expertise of all involved, that we might navigate this morass of consequences through the greatness of our shared intelligence? If you look around at the constancy of all of the crises and don't see them as systemic, then you might be able to give this book a pass. For I won't waste my time proving that the lack of forthcoming solutions isn't structural and derived from systemic corruption, every day we can be beat over the head with all the media about all the crises in the world.
Even with all this technology and immediate spread of information, crises are endemic, popping up left right and center. Solutions to even our most pressing crises are totally illusive: climate change, now decades on since the Rio de Jeneiro conference, still has no consolidated response; genocide and wars over resources are as common as ever; poverty and starvation still abound despite plenty of food and great new productive technologies: Corporations are now greatly concerned with consolidation of their industries because of “overproduction” in most sectors. Why are they concerned with overcapacity? Because supplying too many people brings prices down past profitability in a market... This is why deflation is constantly a major concern of economists these days. Corporations are implicitly admitting every day, from Rio Tinto Inc., to Potash Corp, that there is plenty to go around, and staying profitable means owning enough of the world's productive capacity to shut down production when they want to tighten supply (to raise prices), and in effect keep the world poorer. This is what we all know as the rat race. The process and mechanism of capitalism produces rats, or as Michael Albert puts it [it's way worse than nice-guys-finish-last, in capitalism garbage floats to the top ].
Environmentalist might argue somewhere in this mix 'that sure, science has mastered the world, but we can't take so much'. Technology has made this an old argument. We have now figured out how to grow a car hood, furniture, what have you, in solutions of protein, calcium, etc. We can make things that bio-degrade when you spray organic solutions on them, etc., etc. It is mostly the priorities of investors (capitalists) that has kept these technologies from being deployed sooner. In participatory economics (parecon – the first complete economic model in history by Chomsky’ late ‘60s protégé from MIT) it is likely that society would've prioritized the deployment of such scientific breakthroughs by now. More on this, later in this book.
When many illnesses present themselves in a body we see them as symptomatic to a more systemic disease. This happened with me. I had many small health crises, and so the doctors looked for underlying causes and eventually identified and cured my heart disease. Endemic crises call for systemic change. Why haven't we, a specie on the edge, looked to the heart of all our crises?... the economic system which governs the use and distribution of the Earth's resources.
The above paragraph included a reference to my supreme Canadian health care, so we'll point out that when you allow private market players you'll always get deep corruption in decision making; like what we're seeing with the health insurance lobby in Washington - the market forces that are preventing intelligent health care for hundreds of millions of people. You can't allow un-democratic forces to run the economy - the biggest sphere of society – as in a market economy, and then expect those more powerful forces not to corrupt the much lesser sphere - politics. Our daily lives are much more filled by the realm of economics than politics, unless it's the politics of our economies (like our work places). This is one of the reasons the cry for economic democracy is so apt in a society that claims democratic freedoms rest above all other values.
But unfortunately those crying for economic democracy are mostly all calling for a kind of economy that would, in all likelihood, end up with just as much corruption - only in the current popular proposals the corruption is by an upper echelon of workers ( proved by Prof. Lebowitz. 1981 and his Yugoslavia case studies) or in some kind of Capitalism 2.0. The co-operative republicans and mutualist movements must fall down in similar ways to this corruption by worker capitalism as I'll explain in detail later. The Capitalism 2.0 proponents ignore that we’ve already been down that Keynsian path, and it works for a while but then market players buy out bureaucrats to circumvent the idealistic laws whether they be publically funded elections or state ownership of key social sectors, and slowly put in new laws (because they can pay for the lobbyists, the advertising, the lawyers and the politicians) as happened during and after Roosevelt.
Quickly we come to the basic issue of, co-operation vs. competition. Or rather the age old problem of why should I stick my neck out for revolutionary change just so some other group can rule? Or why should I invest my energy in this or that group when there's always assholes who'll free-ride, co-opt, and out-rite power-play? This is called the assurance problem of co-operative networks and it will get much attention in this book. Participatory economics makes this concern somewhat moot. This book is about making sure we get to a participatory economy by employing means and methods which reflect the co-operative society we want to 'arrive' at. This way we don't end up with the kind of revolutions we saw in Cuba or the United States of America, that eventually stagnate and create almost as repressive and ugly regimes as the ones they threw off, just ugly and repressive in more sophisticated ways, i.e., Gitmo torture, taxation of neo-colonies through global trade regimes and the U.S. dollar; or for Cuba imprisonment without trial refusing exit visas to large segments of the population, refusing access to information by restricting who can have internet, etc. Power-over structures, or win-lose games must always result in some form of violence, no matter how sophisticated the form of the violence.
For many this is reason to throw up our hands and say 'what can we do?! Communism was that other attempt!' This, a simplistic, dichotomous position, is a sad posture to take on, especially when every other discipline, whether it be medicine or computing, is plotting exponential gains in understanding and developments. We are essentially admitting defeat when we imply that there are only two possible socio-economic models (which govern all other fields of endeavour). If our life depends on coming up with a new methodology for intelligent, uncorrupted macro decision making and allocation of resources aren't we ingenious enough to devise a new socioeconomic methodology? And if you can't or won't come up with a methodology (not just a vision of utopia, but a methodology by which we sustain a good, intelligent society) then shouldn't you at least work for the methodologies which others have proposed and large communities have vetted in rigorous debate and development (such as at www.zcommunications.org – the journal of parecon)? After all, our existence as human civilization probably rests on systemic change.
Noam Chomsky, one of the great minds of our time, has a protégé from the late '60s at MIT – Michael Albert - who has devised an elegant model based on human values, ones we might well all agree to. Understanding the elegant, interactive logic of all the mechanisms Michael (and Robyn Hahnel) proposes seems to require a couple of years for people if they keep it rolling in their mind... People not sluffing the model off as an elegant idea seems to require confidence that we could ever get to the widespread adoption of such processes and mechanisms ('processual mechanisms'). Showing that we could figure out how to transition to the participatory economics ('parecon') model is what this book and my efforts on the ground are about. But be assured, the interlocking logic of all the mechanisms parecon proposes do provide, at least logically, a methodology by which we must be good to each other, have un-corruptible, intelligent decision making that does not subjugate, and generally employ the means which are the ends of ‘utopias’ plural. There are a number of new and somewhat challenging mechanisms in the transition that we'd need, challenging because we don't have a very cooperative culture at this time. These transitional mechanisms and how we expound on cooperative culture is most of what this book is about: Like how do we determine what is more onerous and sacrificial work as per the processual mechanism of remuneration-based-on-effort-and-sacrifice without allowing corrupted determinations by certain parties who want their work to be worth more? How do we determine total wealth in circulation, i.e., does art count as wealth, does total amount of engagement time with children count or do we just count the number of care givers per 8 children?... etc. We see this is important stuff when, for example, each unit of remuneration is merely a divisor of total wealth in circulation, meaning your pay only holds value relative to the total efficiency of the rest of the economy. But what is the scale “of the rest of the economy” we're including as the environment of 'total wealth in circulation'? Is it just our local region; maybe inclusive of 3 cities; is it the wealth in the nation, or is it based in the global economy? Big questions need to be answerable if people are to start putting their life energy into this, un-tested, new economy.
It is no longer about incentive to produce enough; we’ve conquered production and there are indeed gluts being consolidated in most goods and services.
A basic posit throughout this book is that no truly democratic body (within a fully established parecon) would do business with another that has democratically chosen to externalize its waste downstream onto the other councils, or commit violence against other participatory economies. That when we are not all at the whim of the amorphous ‘invisible hand’, but, instead, working in networks of consciously cognizant councils, we will only accept actions that respect the needs and considerations of all.
Dr. Albert and Hahnel have seen a destination, I will attempt to chart a course and lay out some sail designs and riggings that might get us there in some good time. Certainly time is of the essence. Collapse is doubtlessly nigh, whether it be the collapse of planetary life support systems for human civilization, and/or that of social cohesion. With the former’ degradation we will likely need co-operative systems and cultures in place to prevent the clambering of us masses over each other. We will need to move away from a day to day of outmaneuvering, underhandedness, competition, and exploitation, (capitalism), and into a culture of participation, co-operation, and mutual aid (Participatory Economics/parecon).
The day to day practices that capitalism requires can never imbue a culture that can implement true democracy or bring out the best of human nature. We must build economic systems that will allow for us to conjure and recognize community. Margaret Thatcher was largely right, there are no longer real tribes and communities, only individuals and families, but do we really want the rich human experience of socialization to be so reduced by capitalism? Or do we want to be able to break out of the little boxes of our self interests and connect again? Unfortunately and fortunately it is not merely a preference any longer, we must have the benefit of alls’ perspectives and effort. The planetary situation calls for unity of effort, which can only come from inclusive decision making, where everyone’s interests are heard and transferred into the actionable decision(s). This way we get coherent and solidaritous action in the rejuvenation of the planet and the distribution of technology to the overly impoverished and needlessly suffering regions (which still abound in the 21st century).
We must plan so well that we head civil war off at the pass… Because I’ve been on the line in the forest, with JTF2 trained snipers (the worlds’ best) hunting me and my friends saving massive old growth Fir trees. We don’t want to go there, it’s ugly and no one wins. All wars are civil wars: humanity against humanity. We must unite and put the planet right, lest we all perish. Lest perrish this beautiful planet, as we’ve walked with and sailed by it’s visible stars for millennia. We must become so efficient and apply all our understanding that we can provide for everyone, heal all curable sickness, while reinforcing the snow packs on glaciers, stop putting green house gases into the air, re-freeze the poles, reinforce the glaciers with better snow-pack, etc., etc. We can do all this, with enough energy and coherent, solidaritous action. We are close to the understandings which can produce the technology to buffer and move back off the climate precipous, the global war/terror precipous, etc. But we need the system which will engender systemic cooperation.
We’re pounding down the door of Thatcher’s other declaration – TINA (There Is No Alternative to capitalism) with the heartful logic of parecon post-structuralism. The false dichotomy of markets vs. centralized command planning (as in the Soviet Union) is not useful to the creative human imagination. And is ludicrous when every other field of human endeavour is achieving exponential rises in understanding and development. Yet we can't take the socioeconomic realm, the one that governs most every other field, beyond communism vs. capitalism?!
So we have the technology, knowledge, overall capacity if we could be good enough to deploy it all fairly and rapidly. Which brings up the next question of human nature or nurture. Are we an inherently bad, greedy and violent species? Or do our socio-economic apparatuses make us that way now and throughout industrial economies despite our basically good nature? I think the answer is obvious, look at how well we get along despite the fact that our basic culture and economics are based in antagonistic structures – buyer vs. seller, employer vs. employee, etc., etc.,. That is that in our current system, nice guys finish last, or as Albert says – “garbage rises to the top”. In order to get ahead and be on top, we need to exploit others, to bolster ourselves and manipulate to make our gains into the few cushy positions in the hierarchy of capital or “coordinator class”. The bottom line is profit. We only consider the costs to the buyer and the seller, everyone else who is affected by the exchange is not considered or is an externality… ecology of any dynamic system is inherently ignored.
Albert has since made an even more refined observation on human nature; we need systemically engendered practices which ensure good values, especially if humanity has natural tendencies for some abominable behaviours. So even if you think that humans are naturally prone to be horrendous, you more so than us Polly Annas should be for systemic change to a methodology which requires us to be good to each other, where the economic institutions produces good behaviour.
While we’re here though let’s go to the actuality of the matter: do you think we survived as tribes through the ice ages, through migration, through having to hunt massive animals by an overarching competitive framework in our tribe? The very way we hunted and gathered was co-operative, full of intensely planned and spontaneous collaboration. Let us remember that the Earth had such a small human population, that for most of our evolution, didn’t allow us to even come up against other tribes or city states, so conflict was minimized. When we ask whether our tribes’ survival hinged on predominantly co-operative or competitive modes we are indeed left to think that all the epic necessity of the epochs required cooperation for survival, we are indeed a social and co-operative species.
The fact that the world is right properly messed is rather obvious. We all know the planet is pretty far-gone and corrupt. No one is surprised to hear yet another account of some other thing going wrong, not working, whether it be the health care system, lawyers not being interested in justice, energy companies fighting against climate action, mercenaries not being interested in creating peace, politicians maneuvering for more personal power, etc., etc. But the whole system demands that we each take care of our own, that we engage self interested rationales at the expense of others, so these horrors seem like par for the course. We aren’t surprised that people take care of themselves at the expense of others. There are tons of books deriding the many ills that arise from this system of self-interested rationales (game theory) that is our world, books telling us about privatization of water, health care, the messed up war, the,,, you name it; stack them up and they could get us a ladder to Mars (‘because Earth will be used up! We need another planet). Unfortunately, if we took stock of all the books, CDs, reports, etc., that pose complete systemic solutions that go to preventing these systemic corruptions and crises from happening again, it wouldn’t stack up very high at all. Everyone knows things are messed up, but we ‘progressives’ insist on beating them over the head with it until they just want to be knocked unconscious. Until they have no hope and just want to enjoy their time on Earth with the people they love, keeping the rest of the world at bay lest any moment be lost to the bullshit they can’t do anything about, the bullshit that is endemic.
But the political Left goes on to say, ‘sure it’s endemic but this issue is so close to people (like water, health care, or climate) that it will rally enough of them and it might grow into a movement that will then address some larger constitutional issues of how decisions get made by who. This is the best answer I can get from leftist activist as to why they don’t directly address the nature of power, the processes of decision making, so that we can get beyond fighting for basic rights to discourse. They seem to think people need the sexy mobilizing issue and once they’re enraptured in that issue we’ll have a movement that can go for the throat (and not very many Leftists have it quite this well articulated at that).
I disagree with this because I believe people see that we’re not addressing the structures and processes by which power-over decision making (like representative democracies where decisions are made for us) can be changed. People rightly ask: ‘even if we win on this issue who’s to say special capital interests won’t just turn around and use the means the special-interests have much greater access to reverse it 5 years down the road?’ This is not to say that the immediate interests of protecting marginalized groups or stopping the barbarism of war aren’t important; broad and diverse social and environmental justice movements are hugely important. But even as much freakishly wild success as I’ve had in my career as an activist, I know that the market and hegemonic systems of power have eroded or are quickly clawing back the gains I helped achieve in small and not so small teams.
Heck, I myself am fighting a fight against highway expansion right now that my parents and their progressive friends fought when I was a kid. So they’re right!.. The ‘working class masses’ are smarter than the ‘intelligencia’. If we keep the system that allows special interests – the wealthy - to use the levers of power that they’re allowed to own almost exclusive rights to, then we are doomed to lose ground whenever we aren’t looking and/or constantly organized. And hell, I don’t want to come home after a 50 hour week and be on guard for the water system, or good mass transit, good public education (which I don’t even think I know can exist cause I’ve never seen it), etc. I want to rest god damn it - I want to enjoy the family I worked so hard to feed… “Are you activists going to feed me while I work with you? How about my family? Oh no!? You have no way to provision for us while we attack this or that single issue that merely represents a totally endemic problem!? Ya, go waste your own time idiot!” They say, quite rightly I might add. We need not look further than to the anti-Iraq war movement to see AWOL war resisting soldiers getting little to no help. And yet the peace movement(s) are calling for soldiers to opt out. I know, my family put up a number of AWOL war resisters, and even though we were better organized here in Canada, little help was forthcoming and one of the war resisters my family put up is now cooped up in the basement of a church, lest he be deported back to the U.S. Hardly any legal funds established from U.S. progressives, no lobbying money to speak of. So are you ‘progressives’ in the states making bourgeois calls that just prompt real people to hang themselves out to dry? If you can’t feed prisoners don’t take any. Can you feed the people you draw into a mass movement, or worse, into the line of fire of the corporate, military-state?
I like the huge %60 some percent of Americans who believe 9-11 was some sort of engineered conspiracy (whether you personally believe it or not)… Still no action from that broad based 'who will rise up once they learn the truth,’ because what are we going to change to that makes this kind of executive power corruption less than the norm it has been for all of human history?
Some activists then say to this, ‘well if we all put in a bit we could rally such powerful movements’. Many ‘average’ people say to that ‘then I go to work on Monday more aware and thus agitated by all the bull shit that is reflected in the economics and structures of my firm? So now I’m irritable and overly analytic at work and I can’t stand it anymore and I either get fired for being a rabble rouser or quit ‘cause I just can’t go along anymore. Now I can’t feed my family, have little access to people in social situations because work is the only place I know where I actually interact in groups in this atomized society, and so I can’t even organize very much, which you, Activist, said was the whole point of being informed.’
If we want to win we’ve got to get real. If we’re building the army of a mass movement that can bring the elite to their heed the needs of the planet, then we need to provision for that army, transport it, have the communications infrastructure in place, etc., etc. This then calls for us to build an economic movement and our own economic capacity. When they challenge us with “you and what army” and we say that one marching in the streets, they scoff. It was clear in planning for Quebec city right after the WTO in Seattle that we weren’t going to get away with shutting down another conference ever again. They have the resources, the gas masks, the trucks to take us away, the jails to hold us the salaries to pay the soldiers, the C4 gas, etc. How do we counter it (without escalating, but while achieving our goals)?
This book is all about provisioning and hope or structural alternatives. I hope it address the above problems and gives us ways around them, not just around but over them in such a way that we become stronger, with our own just systemic, institutional capacities as a result. Many will say that they are merely parallel structures and I say MERELY!?... People will actually be able to see and experience moral alternative processes working, making the old systems of power-over organization look silly… and that is merely!?
This book claims a or even the way because it really only proposes a methodology for all who have legitimate stake to co-decide what will be enacted into reality. It is a book about a new process for coming to decisions together through equitable, inclusive and open discussion, through iterations and distributed networks of stake holder councils (as per worker and consumer council planning in a socialist ownership structure). Even this book’s proposals on how we decide together are up for discussion because it should primarily be published as an editable wiki-book online, with all who buy it having access to discussing the proposals together (hey, I need to live too, and in a market economy, little discussion is truly free, besides the capitalist are constantly driving down wages so we all have less and less time to be involved in deep discussions – wouldn't be the case in parecon, but it is now).
Changing from the processes of domination is key. Many people are quite concerned with how one system of socio-economic organization brings or prevents domination. Many ask why would I struggle for a new system when it will just be run by some new group of crony bureaucrats (like in Cuba or the Soviet Union) or new Turks… The march of history, we suspect, is simply one ruling class giving way to another. Why fight for you?!
Almost all economic schools agree that markets tend towards some kind of monopoly (if not absolute). Most camps of capitalists, or capitalist appologists rile against monopolism and empower a state ‘only’ in so far as it is needed to enforce private parties’ contracts and break up monopolies. Well this is a very large sphere to give the state jurisdiction over and so they immediately put themselves on a slippery slope that slides us right back to domination by a co-coordinator or executive class of the commissar type they so deride in command economies or ‘collectivist societies’.
That if you make self-interested rationales the predominant basis for interaction (as in a market, buyer vs. seller institutional structure) then corruption is part and parcel. Corruption is simply the self-interested machinations of each actor trying to get the most for themselves out of the network. People will always use the means they have to enlarge their security in such a dog eat dog arrangement as buyer vs. seller (market place). They will organize oligopolies to minimize their exposure to risk and box out new entrants from degrading their price margins and distribution networks. This is all in keeping with the processual logic of self-interested rationale that every most every economist has proposed.
Now what’s to keep politicians from employing this same logic that we’ve enshrined in the basic institutional code of wealth distribution? Certainly politicians have more in common as coordinators and executives than they do to the common working person taking orders from an employer (coordinators and capitalists). Why wouldn’t a politician work with a capitalist for their interests, interests which in the invisible hand model of the libertarians are arguably, or at least construably, in the mutual interest of the overall economy? American corporate interests are thought to be in the interests of the United States because big U.S. listed corporations draw capital through U.S. markets, money instruments, etc. Why would they attack these monopolists who are, even culturally, so very much like them and ensure their (politicians’) self-interest (re-election)? You can’t introduce an every-man-for-his-competitive-self system for provisioning and wealth and not expect it to permeate the phenomenology or paradigm of the “non-market venues”, especially the one that you set up to govern the market – the state.
Why do so many economists apologize and try to patch the constant leaks of the market system then? Why is the “best alternative” to domination just another form of domination such as market capitalism? I think it has something to do with the belief that we can’t get along, because we don’t think we can co-operate enough to maintain co-operative equilibriums, which would make game theory or every-person-for-themselves rationales unnecessary. That is we assume that someone will always try to use a co-operative network to take more than their share, so we choose a default system (markets and strong leaders) which expects that. Even though it is obvious to all that co-operation is in the best interest of each actor and a network as a whole, we mostly all pack our bags and go home when some jerks come in and employ the free-rider, prisoner’s dilemma, war of attrition, etc., etc., games, instead of confront the assholes when they jeopardize the equilibrium or co-operative actors’ confidence in the networks ability to give back proportionately to how much they put in. “If a bunch of assholes are just going to come in and use our co-operation to take more than their share, then my possible share is lessened and thus I should co-operate less.” Goes the basic thinking. Totalitarianism comes to being out of this as well I believe. “Well we all want to live and create together but we need strong men to prevent assholes who wedge us apart and take advantage of us.” This must do away with anything that looks like rising above or grabbing for asymmetrical power… and thus does away with most any individual which stands out as an individual, for being one could well mean their ability to divert or use the herd against themselves – voila, the end of individualism in collective or ‘socialist’ societies. This also requires a paradox not terribly unlike the one of self-interested “free” markets… It requires that some people be allowed to have more means and franchise to enforce collectivist co-operation; this is how command collectivism (‘socialism’ or ‘communism’) also allows in its own enemy to guard the flock. More on this in the Black & White Can’t Paint Reality chapter ??. Also we'll cover how participatory process brings a richness to the de-institutionalized code that can allow both the quasi-abstraction of a collective and the reality of the individual.
Capitalisms’ TINA (There Is No Alternative) and pinnacle of human society or end-of-history (a capitalist world is as good as it gets) plays into the dichotomous world view that it must be collectivism or individualism. This is of course a simplistic binary and need not be. We will talk about how an experiential, participatory way of knowing and acting together coupled with a social symbolism and metaphoric structure of meaning (and syntax to a lesser degree) will steep and ground a culture of such holistic and balanced modes of being (our individual selves) together. It is a way that requires a deep engagement with each other and with our-selves; with each other beyond our subjugation to each other or to our own egos or individualism. It is a radical practice of sensual, direct experience of the world… no more sanitation of and separation from nature or this immersion in over abstraction of reality… ‘Venues’ or tools such as this book must become much less important… ‘Gnowing’ more than knowing. Our movements need to exemplify this sensual, ecstatic and fun space… Participatory can’t just be some intellectual endeavour, but palpable when ever a new participant walks into it… that person must taste on the air and feel in their bodies that parecon, parPolity, parKinship, parCultural spaces are truly, excitingly different. They must know that parecon spheres are truly equitable, inclusive, and welcoming via their solidaritous transparency, etc. For participatory isn’t really participatory if it isn’t experiential for each participant, and what's more, it doesn't deliver on the promise of true franchise in decisions that effect that participant. They can't be asked to invest in decision making for things that affect them and then have some extra-constitutional executive body decide that hard forged decision made on the ground isn't practicable. Or even more to the point, they can’t be brought into a decision making process, where maybe even they are the last word, but where the actual process doesn’t feel like it’s about them.
Hopefully this book is nothing more than a step ladder to help us back to the ground from the teetering heights of the processes of abstracting which have helped put this Earth ship into crisis.
Assuming agreement with the basic situation and traditional cruxes, let us move onto the purposes of this book, which is praxis. How are we actually going to actualize parecons and generally a connected world of compassionate co-intelligence? How will we leverage a people’s economy from the current one? Can we ride the wake of market capitalism without getting stuck in its wind shadow… ride into a system that can prioritize connection, health and mass ecosystems repair? Are there opportunities in current conditions that make this time ripe for the birthing of new memes out of new productive means? Can we use institutions that are somewhat democratic but mostly employing of power-over to transition to power-with or participatory governance? I’ve been seeing for years that the answer is a resounding yes! This is no small mission. There are and will be thousands of hurdles, and pit falls. We may feel as if we are starving out in the wilderness much of the time, but we must find a way around all of the challenges, for at stake is our very survival as a civilization. This book is calling on your hope, your sacrifice and sacrament. Dance into a new world with me. I beg you… And I apologize for all my lack of discipline and focus, my poverty, all my limitations that have slowed me down in bringing my version of the winning game plan to you all. But win we must, whether we have to go homeless sleeping on each others’ couches, dumpster dive, ruining many of our credit ratings, etc., etc., we must play to win. Not playing so much as bourgeois protest movements that whine to some elite group for that or this basic decency, but as networked operations which are committed to scaling mountains and crossing the oceans spans of civilization under our own sails, and from wind we blow for ourselves if need be.
So where are the tactical and strategic opportunities which give us a shot at winning a new civilization run by participatory, just processes? Certainly new media and the distributed nature of contents’ encoding and decoding is a big resounding yes for the possibility of change in the modus operandi of our socio-economic make up. The energy crises (a sector that fuels the information economy) is also a ripe opportunity for change if the alternatives that arise to replace hydro-carbons are leveraged by distributed processes of production and ‘ownership’. With minor refinements or development of co-op principles there are whole economic sectors we can quickly employ for participatory modalities. Open source and holoptic, distributed networks are already in use across capitalist enterprise and should be expounded on in federated parecon organizations. Web 2.0 and even science 2.0 have opened up the production of knowledge and culture to participatory social processes. Scientist (sometimes) share their notes and research openly via web sites and are finding that their research is advancing at much quicker rates. The only problem is that we are in a system of patenting and competitive remuneration that makes a lot of researchers fear of being ‘scooped’ on their findings so that they don’t want to share in open discourse lest they give away valuable credit or patentable applications. This is ruinous for all of us! We need technological advancement discussed and developed ASAP!
Many distributed processes are already included in capitalist modes, helping capitalism to burst through new barriers but also challenging the base assumptions of ownership and what really does belong as social capital and does it belong to the private entity for exploit? Why not use these inherently iterative and distributive processes of value creation for the efficiency of parecon economies? Surely peer to peer models of production belong more within a democratic model than an exploitative one.
In Mandarin kanji the symbol for disaster is almost identical as the one for opportunity. If capitalism faces a crisis in these new modes of production shouldn’t moral people be ready to redirect its wealth into models that will provide for the interests of life to maintain themselves, to have a say as much as we have a stake?
Distributed networks like the internet, are inspiring people to collectivize or collaboritise their knowledge and culture. If the way we think about our art, experience and ideas is collective, how long before that structures our thinking for modes of production other than just cultural production? If we network our day-to-day interactions (at least online, with cell phones, etc.) how long before we start to look for the models that allow for an immediacy of democracy that allows for the constant maintenance of those commons? The assumption of this work, of course, is not long – especially if we add some more ingredients to stir the pot towards a complete soup of participatory economies, parPolities, (parCulture, parKinship – the four realms of a society).
More recently, the commons has been discredited (i.e., ‘tragedy of the commons’) because it has no keeper, it belongs to everyone but no one is beholden to its care. The first thing to contest in this argument is that capitalism never had any interest in the maintenance of the public good. The public venues for discourse were wiped off the map. During the 1990s something like 90% of corporate revenue growth was from the privatization of public assets. More importantly to this work though, there weren’t networked communications systems like the internets for deciding on actionable policy let alone the hard particulars of getting it done. There wasn’t a good way to bring together everyone that cared about a national forest to arrange what kind of care let alone the how, when and where of the group effort.
All this goes much deeper into whether we are enabled to even conjure truly public, shared spheres without the metaphors of private property. That is whether we can see ideas as something other than what I buy into, what you sell me. Whether or not we can have anything else other than price wars (‘debates’) over the value or prominence of ideas. So we will focus on institutional phenomenology or mental environments through a cultural and kinship movement which we must build. If our systems and institutional conditions don’t require us to look for and employ good values we aren’t likely to see, let alone expound and draw them out very often. How do we start the practice of looking for values we hardly even know exist anymore, let alone bring together new syntheses of them as per new communications tools that have compressed our perceptions of space time?
We now see the power of participatory, distributed communications systems when volunteer run wikipedia can provide encyclopedic works on par with or surpassing the conventional ones, or when thousands of volunteers can successfully coordinate a decentralized disaster response effort as we saw with the Asian Tsunami, and, after the government’s non-response in New Orleans, with hurricane Katrina. These are grand efforts, which come together relatively overnight because of the passion of engendered participation and peer recognition. This book contends that the major piece required to extend these ‘radical’ forms of production from the information economy to the capital and ‘commodity’ economies are new forms of co-operative finance and strategic positions in certain corner stone sectors of the economy, which we build through Federated Participatory Co-ops.
If we have distributed, co-operative control of food and fuel, we can back our own ‘currency’; there are mechanisms enshrined in the current system that will enable the advent of our own democratically controlled currencies (even ones recognized by the IMF!). If we control our own media we can popularize the ‘brand’ of sustainable, symbiotically democratic life on Earth. Economic entities that systemically allow for the interests of all life to direct consumer ‘markets’, not just in some amorphously hopeful proletariat way, but by actual steps that lead to the exponential growth of parecons and, more generally, an economics of ecology. These steps will be used for our embarkation on an adventure that will be an open discussion (through the web site at www.coooperativeway.org) of joyously hopeful action.
Chapter 1 Treatment: Taking in the Canvass
What would it take to win a whole new world? A world that engenders, and indeed, requires the most desirable of human values just to operate in it? What it would take to win that world is the focus of this book and a revolutionary movement and economy now a foot in Coast Salish Territory (British Columbia). We are going to explore the very real steps that will get us to that world, and map out how quickly, how effectively, and at what financial expense and costs to human beings who participate.
What comes first: the chicken or the egg? That’s basically the theoretical problem at the heart of most of this work. Really that’s just an entertaining question for the beginning of a book that must be kept from the academic grips of this writer’s environment. More succinctly: Do the values we want come before the environment that allows them to exist as a wide spread culture? Can entities based on trust, mutual-aid and equity thrive in a socio/economic environment that is structured around competition, greed, and posturing? Can the highest thought and course for action come through in a (market based) political economy that requires trade secrets, insider information, and buyer vs. seller obfuscation? Competing based not necessarily on expert power or even merit but bargaining power and whoever holds the deed. The highest thought from real deliberation is the antithesis to the values of exchange that are actually rewarded systemically in markets. We see this with alternative fuels when the auto and oil industry can, for decades now, scrap real technology that doesn’t allow them to reap passive profit off their well established market positions. So the answer is, establishing such a cooperative culture under such an economic system is, at best, challenging, at worst the answer, to me and many, seems to be no. This dichotomous question of the chicken before the egg will largely be scrapped in this book however. We will assume that a nascent parecon environment and individual parecon firms can work hand in hand to overcome the massive hurdles that will abound in transition phases. That is we will assume that we can create enough of an integrated economy that runs on and, indeed, requires the values of solidarity, diversity, (participatory) self-management, and equity that we will be able to bring about a real culture of participatory deliberation. By providing limited practice sites in culture (the ParPar movement now under foot) and a whole economic environment for day-to-day adaptation, we will hope that we can move to co-operative ways that we might save the planet.
Of the many issues wrapped up in this catch 22 of the culture before the environment question is the issue that most parecon firms of any significance will have to be founded on capital that comes from individuals’ who’ve won that wealth out of the rat race and, who are thus, in some ways, likely to have big rat tendencies and expectations. Do people with these rat tendencies immediately give up the values that got them that bit of cheese or are they going to expect some capitalist, leveraged return like they can get on the markets based on opposition (buyers vs. sellers), and as most everyone and thing will encourage them to do? In lieu of this we can see that we are likely to fall into some form of workers’ capitalism such as that pointed out by the venerable Michael Lebowitz in his Yugoslavian case studies, and as that now being heralded by many in Northern Italy. We will ask; are there capital and federated structures that can ameliorate this and march with us in lock step towards collective wealth where the parecon mechanisms like consumer council planned consumption bundles and remuneration based on effort and sacrifice can prevail?
“How then do we move away from a system where some people drink champagne and own their own jets and others drink contaminated water and sleep in card board boxes?”(Hahnel) How do we, here in the Global North, transfer our economies, which are responsible for the abject suffering of half the world’s people and the destruction of the planet, into a system that will imbue the expansion of Solidarity, Diversity, Equity and Self-Management or a say equal to a person’s stake (Albert, M. Hahnel, R. 2000)? Can we do it piecemeal or are there some basic foundations we’ll need in order to leap frog the swamping of these desirable values in those of the markets’? This book generally assumes that we may well need some basic foundations from which to strategically build our economic environment in which the above four positive values can survive and thrive.
For now we’ll broad stroke the ‘how’ of getting to an economy that has these values as a benefit of its allocation, production and consumption processes. If there are questions as to why these values are desirable I refer the reader to chapter ?? / introduction ??.
Capitalism is a cultural ocean we have to crawl out of to evolve from. How do we launch ourselves out of this poisonous environment and onto the shores in a way that doesn’t suffocate a lot of us courageous, robust specimens who make the first jump? We can do it slowly and adapt, but really there isn’t a lot of time; the ecosystem we’re used to is poisoning us so we need something of an emergency evacuation. Maybe we can build some intermediary life support institutions that will allow us to stumble around safely, and confidently welcome more people out of the ocean until we trust these elements of Solidarity, Diversity, Equity and Self-Management again.
It would appear that there exists a host that already straddles the toxic sludge of the fiat currency driven markets and the firm land of parecon. Some of the primary hosts are the credit unions and co-ops of various countries. We will look to the easily winnable elections for multibillion dollar co-ops and credit unions for our way of forming Federated Participatory Co-ops. These co-ops will only (1) do business with each other whenever possible, (2) and adopt membership councils for production, consumption and distribution issues. If Federated Participatory Co-ops pay for a lot of printing services then the Federation can help start up a participatory printing co-op with guaranteed business from the get-go from other participatory co-ops and credit unions. Whatever is the next product where Federation puts most of expenditure into (outside of the federation); we get together and facilitate workers who do that to supply the Federation via participatory institutions and mechanisms. Prioritizing investment decisions have to be balanced of course, with other considerations, but you get the idea of how we grow the scale of our parecon so that less and less contact is made with capitalism (on its terms at lease), and thus less and less infectious exposure is had with capitalist modes and cultures.
Apply this to a participatory media and marketing co-op that federated co-ops transfer their marketing business to and we quickly have an of scale media outlet that can communicate the ways of Federation, which would be very popular because of our firms’ moral and consumer inclusive policies. With business-to-business and consumer loyalty Participatory Co-ops can spring up with confidence and establish a wide diversity of goods and services provided by quasi and wholly parecon firms. I figure we could launch into a snowballing participatory economy in which most goods and services could be sourced from within a parecon economic network from a base of just a handful of big credit unions and co-ops and/or a powerful media co-op with mass media assets which we are building from new open-source technology known as wireless-mesh networking – it's widespread delivery of internet for cheap (www.freethenet.ca). Mass media can promote and establish a loyal par-consumer base for almost whatever we want to get into, at first this will likely be start-ups with low capital investment costs but reasonable returns at any scale.
We have put a lot of legal research and development into how we evolve co-ops from the representative, coordinator class prone structures that we find them as today, to participatory structures. My grandmother often cites how the early credit unions and co-ops from her prairie childhood and B.C. coming of age migration and settlement we're taken over and corrupted by petty capitalists' interests.
This work has been a lot about creating a very open participatory governance structure where the members can have more direct governing power, while providing enough checks & balances and double trap doors so they can't be taken over by assholes and enemies. We also put a lot of time into figuring out the jurisdictions we can work from, while being able to adopt legal complex share structures to reduce our tax burden greatly, while being able to pay ourselves with equity for labour input when we can't pay our selves enough at a particular time, or for the tools and assets, that we may have as individual members and want to put in with the other assets and tools to leverage them further.
Slowly, as cultural discourse allows we can introduce Balanced Rotation of Roles (originally Balanced Job Complexes by Albert & Hahnel), Remuneration Based on Effort and Sacrifice (RES) and Say Proportionate to Stake (SPS) to box out the corruption of exploitative actors from participatory deliberation in co-operative decision making networks (addressing the assurance problem). We must secure the co-intelligence of ‘open source’ deliberation where stakeholders can frame issues and solutions based on honest considerations instead of the considerations of special interests who buy off the discussion and dominate the spectrum of debate through their ownership of media. I think having our own media ‘conglomerate’ or Memes Facilitation Co-op with its own of scale, and loyal participation will we be able to compete in strategic communications/maneuvers around and with the capitalist economy. We will explore how a Memes Facilitation Co-op will work, what it will do (including legal work and making minor plays for legislation, and strategic lobbying) and how we might quickly grow it in chapter ??.
Another thing that will popularize Federated Participatory Co-ops (FPC or “Par-ops – Mission Critical Planet Earth”) is that along with our federated membership councils for production and consumption we will have enough leverage with the means to host community deliberation on issues that interact with governments and bring about community designed transit, community gardens, etc., especially at the municipal level which will also serve to popularize parecon and our Federated Co-ops amongst communities.
To some degree we will focus on the relatively advanced co-operative economy in Canada as it contains a special bridge between the current empire driving the “free” market global hegemony and the 'Bolivarian', democratic self-management forging a foot in Latin America; a bridge that we will come to shortly.
We will note at this point that the bridges and mechanisms parecon will put to use in transition strategies, should be ones that imperial capital also requires, and so will loathe to destroy or move for the sake of hindering a people’s governed economy. This is a strategic criterion that we must often look to when analyzing feasibilities of certain tactical and strategic approaches. Also to look to, is who can hold access to the bridge(s) to ensure 'their' political economic system can get resources in and out of the ‘competing’ economic system. The issue of parecon competing with capitalism and whether or not co-operative network equilibri can survive while intertwined with competitive modes is a big question, one which I address at some length in chapter ??.
The international financiers that are the capitalists of the coordinator (privileged) class economy will not stand idly by letting parecon use its structures to strengthen itself at the expense of the market and interest/debt based power (although I, unlike many on the left, do believe that some amongst the powers-that-be will join us as they see the hope and pragmatism of parecon in the face of such ecological and social calamity). There is of course a large debate as to whether a hopeful economy of direct, participatory 'democracy' can get underway in the slip stream of its antithesis, or rather not be corrupted by its interactions with the still poisonous environment. I am not saying that we can use the model of capitalism as the foundation for an economy of ‘we’. I am saying that we must be able to use some of its infrastructure to mobilize an evacuation of parecon resources to provision with/for participants who’d otherwise be unable to make the leap to join us from what is still capitalist territory. Once again, I am assuming that because of our steeping in capitalist culture, we will not be able to apply parecon principles at competitive efficiencies right off the bat, or at least until we have a labour base that can embrace the efficiencies and gains in moral which balanced rotation of roles, remuneration based on effort and sacrifice, etc., deliver.
We must briefly return here to the fact that those who found many capital intensive parecon industries will expect that the chips they bring to the table be “honoured”, that is to say they’ll insist that the property they turned into rats to get give them special considerations or some kind of privileged position of ‘remuneration’ beyond (or before) that of their effort and sacrifice.
This is one example of the transition problems which may water down the basic principles and values of a humane system and thus our credibility. Many will question why we accept some of these evils and rile against others. Milton Freidman, for example, brought up this hypocrisy of condemning income from inherited wealth while falling silent about income from inherited talent in Capitalism and Freedom in 1962.
Is it possible to transition from within this horrendous model to the antithesis values of solidarity and equity without corrupting the integrity of parecon along the way? I believe yes, and I prioritize outlining how respective strategic steps may or may not maintain clear momentum, so that all participants may always see the shores of complete parecons with self-sufficient scale without being left adrift in the doldrums of moral stagnation and thus tempted returns to the tried and tested shores of self-interest.
Dr. Hahnel and many have looked to the peripheries, the Global South, for the fertile ground of the initial planks and indeed defense of co-operative modes and traditions. This work assumes it more pertinent that we alleviate the pressure on that ‘periphery’ by removing the fulcrum here in the Global North. That fulcrum includes the points of war, finance, oil (and generally control of strategic resources or exchange markets), and more symptomatically, the trade agreements of international corporate capitalism and the subsidization of food and thus control of surplus labour. Certainly we, the wealthy, educated, and mobile North are morally required to help get the systemically emplaced boot off their neck and not say, ‘Oh how wonderful it is that you could turn your head a notch while our boot is cemented there.’
So where are some of these pivotal fulcrums which we here in the North can get our hands on that we might alleviate the painful leverage on the planet? In finance there are the credit unions which in many countries, and especially in Canada, operate on scales comparable to the major commercial banks. In energy there are many new technologies coming on line, one of which, algae feedstock based production of bio-diesel (not to mention on location production of hydrogen), creates a bi-product that is an extraordinary natural fertilizer which thereby gives us independence in agricultural production. Battery storage technology is, along with solar power, like with most technologies, advancing in exponential leaps and bounds. So now we have three major sectors that we’d want to move within in order to leverage just, democratic economies (I’m assuming that a progressive, just economic community would at most buy out and divest or re-apply major arms manufacturing, but not manufacture arms at least maybe until we’re at nationalistic levels of political economic scale. where the influence of our system may be subject to military attack).
Returning to our metaphor of the species that must exit its economic environment in order to survive, we find that it is a fitting one for two strategic sectors my long night of analysis has settled me on; agriculture and energy (clothing, food, fuel, and even housing), which we all recognize as base necessities for survival. Without these two base industries we will not be able to provision for the security of all those refugees and emigrates who will wish to join us on the new shores.
Because we are a social species and because of the imperatives for achieving change quickly we’ll need to communicate at a rate that will quickly span time and space (Innis, H. 1950), that we might coordinate our efforts to maximum expeditiousness and solidarity.
Communications systems will be a major part of later chapters. Our focus must turn here because we find in parecons that the major issues needing attention are often not so much economic, but that of coordinating multiple iterations of planning councils and transparently determining stake. Communications are also ensure a holoptic view to all actors so as to head competitive game theory players and just plain old assholes off at the pass before good cooperators start dropping out and start the snow-ball of the assurance problem rolling. Even the market is essentially a simple communication sphere where all participants can see the signals (price) and negotiate (based modes of opposition – buyer vs. seller). This work will posit that energy, information, matter is really an integral part of production, as much as land, labour, capital perhaps. That said we must recognize the interiority of each actor’ values, that is we mustn’t just point at an ‘It’ or ‘Its’ but we must ‘gno’ together from ‘We’ and ‘I’ positions.
In the end, after participatory economics or co-operativism has consolidated itself into economies of scale, we will not need money per se. But in the transition we will need a kind of exchange media to manage the basic communicatory signal, that signal is currency itself and will allow the economy to track itself and further automate the rote categorization and trend predicting for councils. As little more than a communications system that is democratically governed, ‘money’ is an acceptable element in a society and can be used very efficiently as information and, in many spheres, a carrier of communication. So I’m proposing we embrace it and indeed take control of our own, democratic ‘monetary’ system in line with effort and sacrifice principles, as this is another relatively accessible front that is, of course, the central one in our current economy and thus must be met with its subsumation into the economy of life.
This book will look closely at most every tactical and strategic lesson that we might be mindful of when taking major tactical and strategic positions in the economy, as per this work’ main focus. I do not think that winning a culture of Equity, Solidarity, Diversity, and Self-Management can be likened to violent practices of manipulation and control such as war, but there are times in our development where we will require basic understanding of those who will make us their 'enemy' in their inability to recognize the shared interests of humanity, or the processes of co-intelligence, so we will study the lessons of traditional maneuvering in relation to the plays we are proposing here. Thirty five hundred years of violent competition, patriarchy, etc., may not let go of human conditioning easily. It is entirely likely mind you, that the genetic traditions of co-operation are greater; for how else can we explain making it thus far along evolution’s path any other way then working together as tribes to endure and thrive?
Parecon as an Environmental System:
As much as we may be somatic, responding beings able to adapt, we will always look to the stars and try to find our place amongst them. So we will manipulate the heavens (our minds) and thus lead ourselves back into the processes of abstract manipulation, but it need not be control if the priest has a Balanced Job Complex!
No, I don’t speak in tongues, I point out that civilization can be sustainably adaptive as long as we develop via interactions of diverse peoples in touch with their senses and thus each other and reality. Not a civilization overly keyed-in to abstraction and intermediary coordinator classes (interpreters), whether those be of priests for our connection with God or financiers for our interfacing with the means of life. Specialization or the extreme compartmentalizing of time and space must be balanced by and through a co-operative engagement of many others, where we are all free to explore the depths of (a) matter together. In having to engage each other more and more as people with legitimate experiences, needs and creative ideas, we’ll become more in touch with each other and the modes of Connectedness. We’ll have a better ability to be present with reality, or what actually is, and this will allow us to have deeper appreciation of our environments. In more interconnected planning apparatuses such as parecon, human communities will evolve higher order complexity and integration through collaboration and shared intelligence; we’ll be more likely to appreciate the value of such processes in ecosystems. Because participatory planning of civilization must work as complex (eco) systems and model other such methods of interaction, I think we’ll find parecon to be inherently appreciative of deep-ecology and learn more from natural systems for new methods of production (known as bio-mimicry or reverse engineering biology) and complexity.
In my time living with nature (Gaia) at Rainbow Gatherings and at the end of the road with (successful) EarthFirst! style campaigns, I’ve experienced that symbiotic, synchronistic mind is the way of existence. Co-operative systems have been proven in a number of good studies as being more efficient than competitive ones with the one caveat that some co-operative systems need to forge many more computational channels or channels of communication. Once humanity (re-)engages with conscious formation of reality through shared mind (mind(s) and matter co-create and co-exist – combination panpsychism (Seager. 1999) at least), we should be able to reference an ontology well enough that will enable us to perceive and order ubiquitous connectedness in Nature. I think these are the three ways that we can further anticipate, through logic at least, that participatory modes of human governance become inherently ecosystem interested.
Strategic Steps; Triangulating the territory and passing though it quickly:
From priests and financiers we turn to credit unions as they are a great institutional venue for not only getting democratic control of our monetary system in concert with a revolutionary government with an IMF currency, but to also establish (credit union “2nd Degree”) participatory consumer and regional boards which would be the bulk of the council planning system for the economy. Credit unions are great for bringing together diverse swaths of people for broad economic planning because most everyone needs a bank account.
This 2nd degree of parecon strategy ala credit unions is especially useful in that the credit unions’ memberships are a large sample of the population and a central point in the economy through which all exchange can occur. This makes them good places to seek widespread, diverse participation in planning processes as we are likely to be able to bypass the markets with them due to the fact that they will give us a wide cross section of economic participants for iterative council planning all within the finance sector that is a bottleneck for everyone, no matter the industry one is engaged in. Once we have a few big credit unions that prefer tendering business and ‘loans’ to participatory co-ops we’ll be able to institutionalize inter-firm, region and sector planning, thereby getting us much of the way to winning. We've quickly cut out markets and won a network that can work independently with parecon mechanisms and macro processes.
We will move to elect directors to the credit unions (who’ll become facilitators for membership councils of issue stakeholders) along with lobbying current progressive boards as our first steps. We’ll apply a magnifying glass to their current standing in the economy and their potential for parecons in chapter 6.
Many ask; “How will we be able to get enough members to participate with the original Parpar (ParticiPartay) held co-op boards?” This is a good question, what if no one wants to participate, what if these board members are left as dead ducks in an empty basin with no participants for them to fill the pool and swim with? Well then we’ll have some revolutionary people at the helm of multi-billion dollar entities, but this is not enough, that would be mere reform so we must ensure that they will not be dead ducks free falling through their intended purpose as facilitators (not 'directors') for a whole new mode of socio/economic interactionism.
Ensuring that there will be a diverse population of people who’ll be able to participate in the direct governance of co-ops will require a culture of participatory engagement. It will require that people can see the benefits of planning based on the input of diverse perspectives. To these ends I propose that we’ll need to give people the chance to practice and experience these benefits if only in limited scopes.
Artists and activists already work on fun event models that give people an opportunity to practice participatory ways of creating and exchange already. Some of us here in Vancouver have called these events and new art forms Parpars (ParticiPartays) and they will vary from outright parties and festivals to public think tank sessions and community games. They will employ distributed, participatory promotion, planning and performance. These events will/are do(ing) two things: they will establish a campaigning community to elect our directors to the boards of major co-ops, and they will excite a community of people to participate in the governance of those co-ops once they vote in the facilitators (directors) (who act as voting proxies for the memberships’ will) who’ll vote the memberships’ will as proxies (until we can change the law based in ‘representative’ executives).
Many people, including myself, are concerned that from issue to issue, a lack of diverse enough cross sections of a co-op' membership will vote, thus creating the potential for special interests and homogeneous view points to dominate. If indeed we do find that we don’t have large enough samples of participants to bring the full wisdom of society we might employ a transitional form of participatory-direct democracy with something like an issue by issue vote where the board and members split the voting power: If too few members participates (‘vote’) then the board can pick up the short fall in representative or statistically significant stakeholders participation. So the vote of the board can counter weight the calculated shortfall in member participation and try to prevent hijacking by special interests (even though the board may itself have been lobbied or corrupted by the special interest group – hey, it’s transition, there are other ways to prevent special interest control which we’ll visit in great depth in chapter ??). So if only 200 stakeholders develop the discourse and vote but 400 were estimated to be the minimum number required to achieve a full spectrum of perspectives from all stake-holders on the issue, then the elected facilitators' (board of directors) vote would carry half the weight in the decision. So in this scenario of short fall, if the membership votes 60% in favour of something but the board vote comes in 7 out of 10 directors against (70% against), you’d have the board carry the decision – again, all dependent on the ratios called for by voter ‘turn-out’. There are many possible models to deal with the transition which we’ll delve into in chapter ??.
The before mentioned new model events will also do most of the establishing of the parecon brand which I propose be an interpretable motif that is re-designed by members and councils at the ParPar events, and so not an absolute or fixed sign. This will help us garner preferred consumer loyalty, more and more people will be able to see "that version of the motif has me in it; I was there when that one was created". This helps further the exponential growth that we first achieve in federated co-op to co-op business. Par-ops that adhere to the standards of participatory democracy, and the iterative democratic council managed federation, will be able to use the motif as they like.
I propose the motif be established by the population at massive cultural productions such as festivals ala ParPar modeling (essentially doing away with hard and fast audience | performer splits) and through the media outlets that are willing to operate via parecon principles (such as allowing ‘consuming’ members to direct editorial policy and even produce the news) and wish to use the motif to identify (federate) themselves as a part of saving the planet (and thus be able to gain access to large bodies of loyal consumers). We’ll go more into how Federated Participatory Co-ops integrate a media apparatus by setting up contracts for ‘advertising’ in a network of progressive media outlets. Our ads become announcements and enrollment calls for consumer planning councils. So a consumer council of an outdoor clothing co-op would announce that it will be using some of the sales revenue from a line of Gore-Tex jackets to leverage a workers buy out of a sweat shop in Indonesia where the jackets are produced. The ‘spot/ad’ becomes a pledge of sales for the jackets when they come through and maybe even a link to participatory design of what the jackets will look like. In parecon, consuming is not necessarily alienated from the labour of production as in capitalism.
Now that we’ve seen the broad scope of this large canvass let us move on to the brushes, paints and techniques for how we will fill it with the processes of the new, intelligent world. Pick your corner and let’s delve in as per the closer studies we're embarking on in this book.
