A giant once walked here…

Although it will almost certainly never be regarded as such, I believe participatory economics is the greatest intellectual accomplishment in human history.

Decades ago, I thought that, if a parecon were ever to be won, it would not happen until at least 20 years after Michael Albert’s death. Now I think that parecon is unlikely to ever be won, because if people won’t stick together in the good times, then they won’t stick together in the bad times. And people won’t stick together in the good times.

That aside, I still consider myself and identify as a pareconist. I still talk about the theory to anyone who will listen, and I hand out copies of Parecon: Life After Capitalism to anyone who will take them. “Parecon” is literally on my license plate.

While it’s not accurate to say that the biggest impediment to winning parecon is Michael Albert himself, it is very accurate to say that Albert is a huge embarrassment to the economic theory he’s responsible for.

I can’t talk about parecon to anyone without making sure they understand that its principal author, like so many on the left, had his brain broken by Donald Trump. I have to make sure they assess the theory separately from the man who created it, because anyone who makes vote-blue-no-matter-who arguments like Mike does is going to be a dead weight on any effort to win anything positive in the United States, much less the overthrow of the capitalist system.

I’ve long maintained that, until pareconish theory is actually discussed and its implications grappled with, it will not be possible to win any substantive change in the United States. I still believe that; I’ve seen nothing to make me alter my theory of social change. The increased availability of information on the internet has threatened elite interests and caused them to change how they operate, but it hasn’t put fear in them sufficient to cause them to relent on, say, universal health care, which would be a change akin to the victories of Social Security in the 1930s or Medicare in the 1960s — the last time American elites felt truly threatened.

But pareconists of the future (if there are any) should not engage in any undue hagiography around Albert. Tell the truth about the giant he was when he wrote the criminally underrated What Is To Be Undone? (when he was only 27 years old), or the intentionally ignored Unorthodox Marxism (Marxism being the zombie that simply will never die, no matter how many times it’s shot in the head).

If The Poltical Economy of Participatory Economics isn’t the most important book ever written, then it’s its predecessor Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics. Regardless, Parecon: Life After Capitalism is the last useful thing Albert wrote. Albert has spent the last several years a husk of what he once was — a man so dangerous that Hollywood A-lister Mark Wahlberg once used Mike’s website to make a political point — something unthinkable in 2024 as ZNet has long since devolved into pro-Democrat liberal claptrap, an online version of MSNBC.

Take up the inherent morality and strategy of participatory economics despite Michael Albert, not because of him.

I’ve been a pareconist for a quarter century. But I am so ashamed by what Michael Albert’s ZNet website has become.

I stopped visiting the site years ago after TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) broke the brains of so many people I used to respect. But after the assassination attempt on Trump, I decided to see what ZNet was doing.

Literally, in the second sentence of an article by Ted Glick, Glick calls Trump and his supporters “fascists.” This is the kind of stuff I would expect from the World Socialist Web Site or MSNBC. How did the guy who wrote the completely brilliant Unorthodox Marxism end up becoming the worst that Marxists have to offer?

There are Marxists who aren’t fellating the Democrats. I don’t agree with everything he has to say,¹ but Nick Cruse of RBN (Revolutionary Blackout Network) is excellent.

But Mike has never been a socialist, and that was why I liked him. He was a hero of mine for many years. But now he writes stuff like

But then “what causes this time to feel like the worst time?” It isn’t what’s occurring today. It’s what’s straining to happen tomorrow. It is Trump and Trumpism. It is fascism’s anger poised to slide into the White House saddle. It is fascism’s bloody lance pointed at you and I. It is us—about to be ridden. Too U.S. centric? Fair enough. Fill in the name of your own local thug to broaden its meaning.

In the same article, he then writes, “So, what can we do? How should you or I or anyone even think about what to do? It depends on our circumstances and means. We know Trump must lose.”

So Mike is carrying on Noam Chomsky’s quadrennial exhortation to vote blue no matter who? Of course Trump sucks. Trump bombed Syria² and continued (if not expanded) the genocide in Yemen. He cut taxes on the rich. And he armed Ukraine when Obama would not. But he’s not the problem — he’s a symptom of the problem.³

And for someone who used to argue for “non-reformist reforms” — meaning reforms that actually helped suffering people, while laying the ground for a future revolution — Mike used to spend essentially zero time talking about voting or elections. He understood — and taught me, when I didn’t — that elections are not where social change is won. Here’s Mike from over 30 years ago: ⁴

[W]e need to present a new post-capitalist vision encompassing economics, politics, gender, and race. To build a large, lasting movement we need to describe activities that can promote lasting change and show that our movement is sufficiently humane, participatory, and sensitive to come through uncorrupted.

I agree with these words now, and I didn’t then. The reason I didn’t then is because I didn’t understand these words then. Read the whole article for yourself: Mike’s not wasting time on electoral politics at all. Now, though, he writes that, “Trump says let’s have a new Reich” and in another article lays out a “Progressive Economic Election Program” wherein he insists that “Trump must lose.”

My hero, Michael Albert, became — like my other hero of that time, Noam Chomsky⁵ — a dyed-in-the-wool, vote-blue-no-matter-who Democrat. Even non-radicals like Briahna Joy Gray have abandoned #VBNMW.

But none of this matters. What matters is that many working-class Trump voters will listen to a conversation about participatory economics. But if they see that parecon’s creator is just a Democrat who hates them like the rest of the elite liberal establishment, would I be correct that he no longer advocates trying to organize people in sports bars?

Face-to-face interaction with people who don’t agree with us already, or who even disagree strongly with us, is at the heart of movement building. It is harder and scarier than communicating with those who share our views, of course, but it is even more important to do. We won’t all prioritize it, but we can’t all ignore it.

If we build our demonstrations in ways that make us all steadily less disposed and less able to do this kind of outreach, we are on a downhill track. Suppose, for example, that we are on a major campus like the football-focused one in State College, Pennsylvania, where I recently spoke. If our core movement of a couple of hundred folks spends almost all its time relating together and to people very like themselves, and almost none of its time going into sports bars and fraternities and all other campus venues where 40,000 other students congregate, how are we going to become a majority project?⁶

If I talk to someone about parecon, and I tell them I hate both the Democrats and the Republicans (as I do), I have a chance of being listened to. But if I were to try telling them Trump is a fascist and they must vote blue no matter who, then nothing that I say afterward is going to matter. Now, if Trump really were a fascist, maybe I could at least justify it this way.

But calling Trump the fascist, when he was the one who just took the bullet, is laughable. TDS has destroyed the once-great minds of people like Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert.

So for anyone who sees this and wants to know why neither capitalism nor any form of socialism are the answer, see Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics.⁷ For anyone who wants to see the actual mathematical model of the system (parecon) that I claim is both a necessary and sufficient condition for the liberation of the working class, see The Political Economy of Participatory Economics.⁸ And if you want to see a more expanded explanation bereft of any unpleasant equations, see Parecon: Life After Capitalism.⁹

But ignore the fact that the website they’re hosted on was founded by a man who was once an intellectual giant, but is now just a pathetic agent of the horrible Democratic party.

I’d be curious to know if, were he still living, the great Howard Zinn would also have developed TDS. My guess is probably, since you really can never have any heroes. Still, two years before his death, he wrote the following:

Would I support one candidate against another?

Yes, for two minutes — the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, as concerned citizens, should be spent in educating, agitating and organizing in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools.

[…]

Let’s remember that even when there is a “better” candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush),¹⁰ that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore.

[…]

Without a national crisis — economic destitution and rebellion — it is not likely the Roosevelt administration would have instituted the bold reforms that it did.

Today, we can be sure that the Democratic Party, unless it faces a popular upsurge, will not move off center.

The two leading Presidential candidates have made it clear that if elected, they will not bring an immediate end to the Iraq War, or institute a system of free health care for all.

They offer no radical change from the status quo.

Replace “Iraq War” with “mass murder in Gaza,” and the piece could have been written yesterday.

Anyway, I’m a pareconist, not a Democrat.¹¹ Whatever Michael Albert may say or believe about his creation, parecon, his actions say he’s now a Democrat and, as far as I’m concerned, that his website is a limited hangout.