[Peace-discuss] Real Utopia

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Oscar Wilde once said that socialism was a good idea, but it would take too 
many evenings...  BTW, if you want to read about utopia, you could do worse than 
read the brief book by that title that coined the term 400 years ago: I think 
the best translation is the Penguin Classics pbk, ed. Paul Turner (ISBN-10: 
0140449108).  --CGE]


	A book review by Milan Rai
	Source: New Politics
	February, 02 2009

	Chris Spannos
	"Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century"
	AK Press, 2008
	ISBN: 9781904859789


REAL UTOPIA is a wide-ranging book that can deliver for the open-minded reader. 
It relates ideas and actions that develop naturally out of commonly held values, 
but that can still bring surprise, the shock of revelation, the rearrangement of 
familiar territory, and a different framework for us to see ourselves within.

Who is the "us"? People who subscribe to the cry of the World Social Forum: 
"Another World Is Possible!"

The questions many of us urgently want answers to are: What is this "other 
world"? What does it look like? And: How will we get there? Real Utopia doesn't 
pretend to have all the answers to these questions, but it has many more of the 
answers, and more satisfying answers, than any other single book I know of.

I'm not convinced by every single claim or argument put forward in Real Utopia, 
but I am convinced that everyone who seriously wants "another world" in the 
spirit of the World Social Forum should engage with this readable, remarkable book.

The point of Real Utopia is to counter despair, and to present a credible vision 
of the future that can meet the growing desire for a humane social order that 
eliminates centralized power and oppression. According to the "complimentary 
holistic" theory underlying the book, such a vision should address 
simultaneously gender, power, race, and class, without giving any one sphere 
primacy over the others. There are therefore thoughtful and attractive 
contributions from Cynthia Peters, on a vision for "family, sexuality, and 
caregiving in a better world"; Stephen Shalom on possible new political 
structures in such a world; and Justin Podur on race and culture.

The heart of the book, however, and the overwhelming bulk of its 400-odd pages, 
lies in a proposal as to how our economic lives could be transformed by a new 
set of structures known as "participatory economics" -- "parecon"-- for short. 
Even within "complimentary holism" (previously known as "totalism"), class is 
still the central concern.

One possible justification for the greater emphasis on economics is that undoing 
capitalism would help to undermine other forms of oppression. Cynthia Peters 
observes: "The principles that guide a pareconish society would do a lot of the 
heavy lifting when it comes to addressing gender imbalances outside the home." 
The elimination of sexist income inequality and women's economic dependence on 
men, and the creation of workplaces that "ensure equal access to 
decision-making, so women and men would be equally experienced at taking on 
empowered roles," would all create systematic pressures towards gender equality 
(though not guaranteeing it), in her view.

For people sickened by patriarchy and capitalism, this should be very 
attractive. Similar remarks could be made in relation to other forms of 
oppression. However, parecon has met with a great deal of hostility in just the 
circles one would expect it to be welcomed.

There are two strands to Real Utopia: experience and theory. My advice to 
someone new to parecon would be to first turn to the brief chapters dealing with 
experience of parecon enterprises, such as Jessica Azulay's essay on The 
NewStandard, a trail-blazing radical online hard news paper that lit up the U.S. 
scene for four years. The editors and journalists of The New Standard collective 
divided the work of the business into four categories: managerial, content, 
administrative, and a mixed category they called "conmin." (There would have 
been a janitorial category, if they hadn't all been working in separate physical 
spaces.)

"Managerial" work included participating in collective meetings and other 
policy-related decision-making. "Content" work included reporting, editing, and 
website development. "Administrative" tasks were bookkeeping, answering email, 
providing technical support for users, taking minutes, and so on. The point of 
labeling tasks in this way was to ensure that each person in the collective 
experienced as much empowering work, or as much tedious rote work as everyone 
else. The "conmin" category was invented to account for the fact that there were 
tasks which were less desirable than most content work, but more empowering than 
most administrative work.

Azulay writes: "When we divided up the work, we tried to make sure that each 
staffer was assigned roughly the same number of hours of each kind of work." In 
parecon, this is known as a "balanced job complex."

In a parecon society, job complexes should be balanced not just inside a 
workplace, but across the economy, a point made forcefully by Paul Burrows in 
his valuable reflections on his five years working in Winnipeg's Mondragòn 
Bookstore and Coffee House collective.

Together with Lydia Sargent's typically brisk and bold account of the creation 
of South End Press and Z Magazine (heroic endeavors both), these are inspiring 
and enriching examples of radical cooperative enterprises surviving -- and 
upholding anti-capitalist values -- under highly stressful conditions.

On the wider scene, parecon is a proposal for a new way of organizing the 
economy as a whole, with a new pay system (remunerating for effort and sacrifice 
rather than the economic contribution made) and a set of structures for 
collective, participatory economic planning.

LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM IS BASED ON THE claim that a future society can be 
constructed in which working people directly control their own destinies -- in 
their own workplaces and neighborhoods -- without the need for any form of 
external control by state, corporation, party, or other managerial elite. 
Different proposals have been made over the last 150 years or so as to how these 
networks of workers' cooperatives and neighborhood assemblies could work.

Parecon contains a rigorous, theoretically consistent, and economically valid 
model that has been developed for workers' and consumers' councils to engage in 
participatory planning. This model is not spelled out in Real Utopia, but an 
intriguing relevant example is sketched out: the development of participatory, 
bottom-up (upside-down) planning in the Indian state of Kerala between 1996 and 
2001, involving over 3 million households in local associations. Other inspiring 
and fascinating large-scale efforts touched on in Real Utopia include the 
factory takeovers in Argentina and the extraordinary participatory democratic 
initiatives in Venezuela.

There is much to learn from these initiatives, from the history of the Russian 
factory committees in 1917 (discussed by Tom Wetzel), and from the anarchist 
transformation of much of agricultural and industrial life in Spain during the 
Civil War (examined by Dave Markland). I personally learned a great deal from 
these essays -- and even more from Robin Hahnel's extraordinarily rich 
discussion of social democratic reformism and anarchist purism.

These analytical and historical contributions are worth the price of Real Utopia 
by themselves. However, the real value of Real Utopia, and of parecon, comes 
from a rather sharper challenge.

The central value of anti-capitalism is that class is wrong. It is wrong that a 
small minority who hold power by reason of ownership, by reason of wealth, 
should dictate the lives of society as a whole, forcing people to rent 
themselves out as tools used for purposes they do not choose.

Anti-capitalism, if it means anything, means a commitment to classlessness. Yet 
it is clear from 150 years of revolution that working class people have more to 
fear than the investing/owning class. As Bakunin foresaw long ago, the educated, 
intellectual classes can also seize hold of the reins of power, often in the 
name of the people, so that the people will be beaten with "the people's stick." 
There are actually three classes at work in industrial societies -- capitalist 
owners, workers, and an intermediate stratum, which Bakunin called "the new 
class" and in parecon is known as the "coordinator class."

When I first became aware of parecon, I was fully aware of, and subscribed to, 
Bakuninist critiques of Leninism and "the new class." Still, I had a number of 
questions and concerns about parecon (some of which are expressed by Barbara 
Ehrenreich in her semi-debate with Michael Albert in Real Utopia).

One thing I was not convinced about was the idea of "balanced job complexes," 
and the suggestion that we should try to implement these now, in our current 
progressive organizations. I'm a writer, an editor, a speaker, a facilitator. I 
have specialized skills. It seemed irrational, if not bizarre, to expect me to 
do a lot of other forms of (disempowering, rote) work as part of my radical "job 
complex," when this would reduce the amount of time I spent doing the things 
which I am good at, and which are badly needed.

I carried on feeling this way until the summer of 2006 when, as part of a 
special ZNet conference, I watched Michael Albert ably and patiently fending off 
disbelief and fairly hostile criticisms of parecon from radical intellectuals 
just like me. Unbidden, two ideas rose up inside me. Firstly, I thought: 
"Michael Albert is a great man." (Now why did I think that?) Secondly, it came 
upon me that the real reason I was resistant to the idea of the "balanced job 
complex" was I have a class interest as an intellectual in expecting other 
people (less educated, confident, articulate, word- skilled people) to do the 
boring work that has to be done in any movement for social change. I was ashamed 
of myself.

The value of parecon at this point is, in my view, two-fold. It provides a 
rigorous model for a future society that "works" theoretically, giving credence 
to the idea that there is no worked out non- authoritarian alternative to 
capitalism that is worth pursuing. Much more important, in my view, is that it 
sharply confronts the class interest of intellectuals working in progressive 
movements. Such as myself.

Lydia Sargent writes that when she helped to set up South End Press, one 
(invaluable) radical publishing house was run by three white men; well-educated 
white women did most of the editing; a black woman was the receptionist; and 
Latinos packaged and shipped material from the warehouse. It seems safe to 
assume that class differences aligned with gender and race inequalities.

In the essay I have already referred to, and which I cannot praise too highly, 
Paul Burrows writes: "We should not tell people anything, unless our movements, 
our own alternatives, our own institutions embody the values we profess to 
hold." We need to build the future now, in what we do now.

I believe in classlessness. I've had a revelation about the balanced job 
complex. I'm a committed activist -- I've been to prison four times (admittedly 
for the briefest of sentences) for political action. On the British scene, many 
people who know me see me as near the radical extreme. And yet.

Have I tried to create balanced job complexes at Peace News, where I am a 
co-editor? At the peace group Justice Not Vengeance, where I am one of three 
organizers? In Rootstock, the radical social investors' co-operative, or Walden 
Pond, the radical housing co-operative, I am part of? Have I even raised the 
subject for discussion?

If we are going to replace capitalism with a decent society, we are going to 
have to deal with the new class as well as the owning class. I've met the class 
enemy. It's me. And probably you.

I can't think of a better place to start the new class struggle than by studying 
Real Utopia.

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