ParEcon Questions & Answers
Dissent and Parecon?
There is no end to history. There is no end to dissent. A participatory economy has, we believe, highly desirable features. For a new economy to eliminate unjust income differentials, to produce solidarity rather than anti-sociality, to diversify rather than homogenize outcomes and opportunities, to engender self management rather than authoritarianism, to attain classlessness rather than class rule–these will be major advances for humanity but they will not be the last advances for humanity. Within a society with a parecon there will without doubt be frequent issues and situations which call forth dissent. Even more, intermittently there will be broader dissent directed not only at a policy or a habit, but at underlying institutional features. It is not that there will arise desires to return toward capitalism. That would seem very unlikely. Indeed, a passage from Ursula Le Guin about reactions of characters in her novel The Dispossessed toward capitalism is quite germane. While Le Guin’s revolutionized economy certainly wasn’t parecon and lacked convincing institutional details, its broad qualitative character had many features remarkably similar in intent and motivation to parecon. So here is a character from her preferred economy attempting to learn about capitalism:
So, while dissent in a parecon is unlikely to look backward, maybe in the economy there will arise movements to make levels of fulfillment, pleasure, and dignity equal, not to only make the material conditions and social relations that contribute to these equitable. Or maybe the focus will be removing the whole idea of measure regarding human traits or rewards, or even the the whole idea of warranting rewards at all. Here is one of LeGuin’s characters, again:
Whether this makes sense and rises to prominence or whether some other new set of aspirations do, even beyond parecon’s logic, in any event, whatever types of dissent arise whether regarding other social features or regarding the economy itself, what should be society’s reaction to them? There is a place in human life for caution, perhaps more so than many radicals and revolutionaries would care to admit. Long-standing gains, hard won conditions, social habits and relations honed over decades, centuries, and even eons, can certainly have virtues that transcend first appearances, and it may well be wise to be cautious in proposing and then seeking replacements. But, while a cautionary attitude may have merit to avoid carelessly losing hard-won gains, an attitude that says the past is the future because there is simply no avenue forward but instead only preservation or loss, goes too far. Even more, we know that changes come, almost always, on the heels of critique. It is when some individual or some group makes a compelling case that there are inadequacies and when additional people then begin to conceive alternatives and to agitate for innovations that serious changes occur. Criticism and the seeking of innovations are the lifeblood of the major gains of humanity. So shouldn’t it be true that humanity should welcome dissent and not repress it? Of course not every such effort pans out. Some investments tell us only what doesn’t work but give us nothing new. Others barely even manage that much. Nonetheless, we don’t say that we shouldn’t support investments on the grounds that not all investments work. We instead gamble because we know that enough investments work to greatly make up for those that fail. Consider the composer, writer, painter, or scientist. Each will often embark on a path forward in their own particular discipline that fails. Are they being a bad composer, writer, painter, or scientist when they undertake a project which doesn’t deliver as they hoped? No. Their successes won’t come without their failures. Not only does one learn from the failed efforts–even more so, there is no way to undertake only projects that will succeed. We don’t know outcomes in advance. We can try to avoid frivolity and ignorance, though we should do it cautiously since it may be us and not the composer, writer, printer, or scientist we reject as frivolous who is ignorant, but for the most part, where there is a reasonable level of competency and reasonable seriousness, investment makes sense. The same goes for dissent. Perhaps a good society should on occasion ignore, dismiss, or even obstruct what seems without doubt to be frivolous or ignorant dissent, though there should be a considerable burden of proof on doing so. But in serious, informed cases, society ought to not just abide dissent, even dissent against its own structures, but should subsidize it. If this is the mark of a good society, how will a parecon fare as a part of it? A parecon has as a central value diversity. It is a small stretch, even a natural extension from diversity within a system to diversity regarding a system. Likewise, a parecon equips all its participants with confidence and knowledge in accord with their inclinations, laying the basis for critical thought. Moreover, a parecon supports economic initiative and innovation whenever it has sensible promise of meeting needs and developing potentials–so why not support with the same vigor dissent that has the potential of institutional innovations that benefit people? There is no reason, one hopes, for the advocate of a parecon to feel an insecure fear about his or her economy that would lead him or her to defend pareconish values or institutions from critique to the point of reflexively rejecting prospects for innovation. Why should even a sensibly cautious pareconist oppose exploring the possibility of structural alterations that would benefit humanity more than current arrangements do? In a parecon economic costs and benefits are equitably distributed. Any proposal for innovation that violates the fairness of the system by advantaging some people at the expense of others will presumably meet stiff resistance at least from those who would be disadvantaged. But why would any proposal that claims it can benefit everyone and makes a compelling case to that effect meet a priori or reflexive dismissive opposition? People might doubt a critical idea’s possibility, of course. But the answer for that is not rejection, but testing. A parecon should by its logic and its values accommodate to and even better propel the idea of society continually subsidizing critiques of itself and experiments in its own renovation and even redefinition. A society that includes a parecon and a compatible and comparably worthy polity, kinship sphere, culture, environmental context, and so on…will be, on this score too, a civilized rather than pre-civilized system. But what about now? What about before winning a new economy and a new world? What about dissent from the parecon vision now?
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