Continuing the saga of international notice for Parecon alongside U.S. silence, we have an award in Italy to be presented in mid October. The citation with the award is, to use a favorite word of mine, mind boggling — all the more so in light of the signature…
Medal of the President of the Italian Republic
Awarded by the International Scientific Committee of the Pio Manzù Centre to Michael Albert
The highly prolific American economist Michael Albert is the author of a bold, innovative economic theory aimed at replacing self-serving competition in the economic field with egalitarian cooperation.
Together with his co-author Robin Hahnel, Professor of Economics at American University, Washington D.C., he has developed and popularised a radical economic model, known as Participatory Economics, which constitutes an alternative both to capitalism and to what used to be the Soviet-style model of Real Socialism.
In Participatory Economics, solidarity takes the place of competition and remuneration for duration, intensity, and onerousness of work replaces remuneration for property, power, or output. Likewise, methods of self management replace authoritarian decision making and a new method of allocation called participatory planning replaces markets.
To realise his project of radically changing a private-enterprise production system that generates economic inefficiency, Michael Albert counts on workers and consumers operating in councils according to the principle of participatory self-management.
The Pio Manzù Centre recognises that this American economist’s radical new theory constitutes the most powerful and fully articulated challenge to the current models of socio-economic thought and that Albert’s outstanding merit lies in the fact that he has indicated a new major highway in economic organisation as a feasible proposition.
Signed
Mikhail Gorbachev, President
Rimini, 17 October 2004
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