Critiques of Parecon
* Book: Anarchist and Other Critiques of Parecon. Ed. by James Herod, 2026
URL =
(as yet unpublished)
Excerpts
From the Preface
By James Herod, July 2026:
"The Parecon Phenomenon is over. Finally! Thank our lucky stars.
I have pulled together these critiques of Parecon only to preserve a record of an entirely peculiar episode in leftist intellectual life in the United States.
Eleven of the sixteen pieces gathered here are from anarchists. Jeff Stein, James Herod (2), Odessa Steps (2), Wayne Price (4), Joseph Kay, and Steven Jonns.
I have included four who don't identify as anarchists because I thought their critiques of Parecon were especially useful: Peter Staudenmaier, Takis Fotopoulos, David Schweickart, and Michel Bauwens.
Peter Staudenmaier approached Parecon from the standpoint of a social ecologist.
Takis Fotopoulos, although identifying at one point as an anarchist (I think), in this debate was bouncing Parecon off his own theory Inclusive Democracy. David Schweickart identifies as a market socialist. But this orientation had no bearing on his critique, 'Nonsense on Stilts'. Only in his second essay, 'I still think Its Nonsense'," did he write a couple of paragraphs at the end about market socialism.
Michel Bauwens was comparing Parecon to his own Peer to Peer approach.
Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert published their book, Looking Forward, in 1991.This is the book that launched Participatory Economics. They strenuously promoted the proposal for the next twenty years. Given Albert's position as a publisher and major webmaster, he had a platform from which to promote it. Hahnel also was well established as a leftist teacher, scholar, and writer. They managed to get their proposal debated by just about everyone on the left, not just the ten authors included here. These debates are all included now on the ZNetwork website under 'debates'.\
I have extracted the responses of these ten authors to Parecon, leaving Albert's responses aside. If you want, you can read his side of the debates on his website. I did not want to give him yet another platform from which to promote his proposal. Besides, many of the authors included here quote Albert at length in their responses. So he is getting plenty of space here anyway.
Although Jeff Stein's book review, Peter Staudenmaeir's engagement, and my rant preceded Odessa Steps essay, hardly anyone saw those. It was only with Odessa Steps; essay of 2003, The Sad Conceit of Participatory Economics, that Albert had to start paying attention to anarchists.
Here are my annotations about the responses of a few of these authors.
Jeff Stein
A review of Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty-first Century. published in Libertarian Labor Review, No. 12, Winter, 1992. On the Internet at: http://syndicalist.us/2012/08/01/book-review-looking-forward/;. This first critique of Parecon, published shortly after the book came out, was pretty much spot on. Stein questions the idea of “balanced job complexes,” raises concerns about the possible authoritarian abuses of all the facilitation boards, challenges Hahnel and Albert’s take on the division of labor, and discusses their use of the labor of value. He concludes: “While terms like “councils” and “federations” and anarchist quotes litter the text, there is no clear understanding of these demonstrated by the authors. Looking Forward is a utopian Marxist proposal with little anarchism in it.”
Odessa Steps;The Sad Conceit of Participatory Economics,; Northeastern Anarchist, No. 8, Fall/Winter,2003. Online at: http://nefac.net/node/1414;. And;We are more than we eat: Reply to Tom Wetzel Defense of Participatory Economics,; Northeastern Anarchist, No. 10, Spring/Winter,2005. Online at: http://nefac.net/node/2014
This was the next critique of parecon, published in 2003. Odessa Steps catches full well the revulsion felt by most anarchists upon reading this proposal. It is just so far from what anarchists want. She calls attention to the heavy bureaucratization implied by the scheme, to the fact that everyone has to work at a job for an income in order to live, and to the dangers of the system reverting to capitalism. She then gives a sketch of the “economics of a free society.”
Takis Fotopoulos
Inclusive Democracy and Participatory Economics,; Democracy and Nature: The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Volume 9, Number 3, 2003, pages 401-425. Online at: : http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/dn/vol9/takis_parecon.htm
There is a shorter piece on it at: http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol1/vol1_no2_IDvsParecon.htm.
This is one of the most thorough critiques and rejections of the Hahnel and Albert Proposal. Fotopoulos covers all the main features of the proposal, showing their weaknesses, undesirability, or outright impossibility. Throughout he compares the parecon scheme with the model of inclusive democracy which he has developed, a far superior model to parecon, but one that has received scant attention, possibly because Fotopoulos doesn’t have at his disposal an extensive alternative media network. |
Wayne Price
Price focuses on the long-standing anarchist belief in decentralization, and argues that parecon seriously violates that principle. He also criticizes the plan for its total neglect of any concrete strategy, based on an analysis of the tendencies of contemporary capitalism. In particular, he criticizes Hahnel and Albert for participating in electoral politics.
Peter Staudenmaier
In addition to a more general critique Staudenmaier takes Hahnel and Albert to task in particular for two features of their plan – their substitution of “consumer councils” for popular assemblies, and their separation of the so-called economy and polity into separate spheres. This is one of the best rebuttals of parecon, in favor of anarcho-communism (or libertarian communism) which is based on local community control stemming from deliberative democracy in assemblies.
David Schweickart
This is perhaps the most devastating demolition job done so far on parecon. What he does is try to imagine in concrete detail how the plan would work. It turns out that it wouldn’t work, at all, ever. It is a practical impossibility.
I have found Albert's responses to these authors critically flawed. His verbosity is off the charts. He never really engages with his opponents; criticisms, but just keeps repeating, ad nauseum, his parecon talking points. Debating Albert is a frustrating experience for many.
My 2012 talk about Parecon was recorded and is up on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8d7atEyt0U
I hope this book will find a niche in the intellectual history of the left in the United States."