Michael Albert
So
far I have sent out an economic vision and strategy commentary each of the past
eight Sundays. I assumed we would quickly agree that we don’t have but that we
do very much need a shared economic vision, and that to get one we need to
collectively debate visionary ideas, junk what we don’t like, come up with any
new features we need, and finally settle on something we can collectively
espouse. But since it seems that we don’t in fact agree about the importance of
this agenda, here I want to re-visit the claim that having shared vision and
program is a prerequisite for an effective mass movement.
Imagine
you are organizing folks for the upcoming Washington IMF/World Bank
demonstrations. Or that you are giving a public talk about poverty, or that you
are making a presentation in an economics class, or that you are hanging out in
a bar chatting with workmates. Someone says, okay, I know you hate what people
are paid in our society. You hate our society’s jobs. You hate the way its
decisions are made. And you hate its competition and profit seeking. So what do
you like? What should people earn? How should we arrange jobs? How much power
should people have? What kind of workplace or budgetary decision-making should
we have? How should goods and services be allocated? What economy do you want
instead of capitalism?
My
experience is that folks skeptical about activism raise just these questions,
yet few leftists can compellingly answer them. If there aren’t any alternatives
to present institutions, these skeptics rightly reason, then seeking systemic
change is foolish. If we must have wages paid the way they are now, jobs
organized the way they are now, decisions made the way they are now, and profits
sought the way they are now, then even if we somehow change some other aspect of
our economy, these basics are going to overwhelm any momentary gains, and
everything will eventually wind up back where it was or worse. So why seek
hopeless change?
We
can logically rebut such cynicism by noting the important gains movements have
won in our history: the end of slavery, women’s suffrage, child labor laws, the
end of Jim Crow racism, the forty hour workweek. But no matter how high we pile
such historical evidence, our reports of past victories won’t assuage everyone’s
doubts about contemporary prospects. To become motivated, most people need to
see how economic life could be more fulfilling and how their actions could
contribute to such ends. To become motivated, doubtful people need to encounter
credible, positive, inspiring aims, over and over, coming from many activists in
many venues, all more or less synchronizing what they say for mutual
reinforcement. In other words, to become active typical citizens need to
repeatedly encounter inspiring organizers with shared vision and strategy.
And
it isn’t only that activists lacking shared vision won’t inspire and sustain
motivation. Sensibly choosing tactics and usefully stringing together campaigns
to reach sought goals also requires shared vision. Vision provides hope and
motivates effort, yes, but it also organizes our criticisms and orients our
struggles. Vision motivates participation and it informs strategy. Strategy in
turn prevents reactive and dysfunctional politics. Yet amazingly, even though
there is lack of motivation, reactive organizing, and dysfunctional politics all
around us, there is not only little agreement in our movements about either
vision or strategy, there is also little effort to rectify the confusion.
For
example, ZMI is a school that Z holds each summer. Some folks arrive very new to
left thought and activity, of course, but many others arrive with an amazing
wealth of practical experience. Nonetheless, even in its congenial atmosphere
and with its highly motivated constituency, very few who come to ZMI can
confidently present an economic (or kinship or cultural or political) vision and
strategy. And the same holds true of organizers I meet when I go out to speak
with local community groups or on campuses. Many have well formulated
understandings of the oppressive dynamics of current institutions, to be sure,
but few are clear about what they want in place of current institutions and
about how to attain it.
Is
all this a problem? Is it part of why our movements are weak? Is attaining
shared vision and strategy at least as important as enumerating for the fourteen
thousandth time that corporations are authoritarian, that poverty hurts, and
that profit shouldn’t go before people? Or are clear and compelling vision and
strategy irrelevant, so that we only need to describe more perfectly how current
injustices operate and what our immediate targets should be, and then watch the
barricades go up?
Parecon
itself may or may not be a compelling economic vision, and likewise for the
strategic insights I have offered over these past few weeks. But what seems
absolutely certain is that if parecon isn’t worthy then we need to figure out
something else that is. And whether we start with parecon or with something
different and better, we need to collectively refine, enhance, and learn how to
argue for a vision, as well as how to extrapolate strategy from it.
In
short, to succeed our movement needs economic vision and related long and
short-term program. For that matter, it also needs kinship, cultural, and
political vision and program. Of course, not everyone has to be working on
developing all this vision and program every minute of every day. But don’t
quite a few of us have to put some serious energy into that creative task? And
at the very least, once visions are enunciated and refined, don’t we all have to
understand them and make them our own and become good at explaining what we want
and how we are going to collectively go about getting it?