Book review: Parecomic- Who wants an alternative to exploitation and immorality?

Writer: Sean Michael Wilson
Artist: Carl Thompson
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Released: May 14th 2013
Website:
http://catalog.sevenstories.com/products/parecomic-michael-albert-and-the-story-of-participatory-economics


When you are born into a system it can feel that things have always been that way, that the system is organic, natural, and just the way that things are. Going against it can seem absolutely absurd, a bit like complaining that when you go swimming you tend to get a bit wet.

That’s the feeling you get when you complain about something called ‘Capitalism.’ A system where everybody is competing, everybody is stabbing each other in the back, everybody is exploiting, everybody is devious, nobody is to be trusted. It’s an economic system that encourages selfishness. Get what you can before somebody else gets it first. Morality is irrelevant in capitalism. It is Darwinian. Eat or be eaten. But is that really natural, is that what we are as human beings?

Some would argue that human beings are selfish, immoral animals, and that Capitalism is therefore perfectly in tune with the nature of humanity. Capitalism is selfish, harsh, immoral and violent because that is what humanity is. I disagree with that analysis, but I’ve always been a bit ‘weird,’ a bit different to everybody else. Call me a hopelessly deluded romantic, but I hold humanity in a higher regard than that. I see people as eminently mouldable, and if you place us in an immoral system and tell us that immorality is the norm from a very young age I see it as perfectly natural for us to act with no regards to anyone other than ourselves.

But what would happen to our species as a whole if we were born into a system structured around moral fairness and human happiness rather than exploitation and immorality? Would humanity, being the nasty brute that it is, reject it? Or would it flourish and ostracise anybody still clinging to the old capitalist model of selfish exploitation? I still have hope for humanity, so I’m going for the later, but even if you disagree with my assessment wouldn’t you like to give humanity a chance before consigning it to the dustbin of history? I want to give us a chance, and that’s what this comic book is all about.

Parecomic offers a moral alternative to Capitalism. The narrative follows the life story of Michael Albert, and explores his idea of a ‘Participatory economics.’ In this system, which is explored through conversations between Albert and various individuals, people are rewarded for the duration, intensity and onerous (does it benefit society, or not?) of their work. This is very different to our current system where 20% of the working population exist as a ‘co-ordinator.’ This class of managers and decision-makers monopolise empowering work, and rewards itself way out of proportion to the actual good that they do in the world. They exist as a new privileged class above the 80% of workers who spend their lives doing routine, powerless work with no say, no power, no control over their lives other than doing what the 20% order them to do.

There are two aspects of the ‘Participatory Economics’ model that particularly appeal to me, coming from an anarchist mindset as I do. The first was that there are no centralised governing bodies. All of the decision making in this model is done on the local level through democratic committees arguing through their problems, and then voting on it. There is no central committee telling them what they must, or must not do. It is democratic and empowering, as opposed to the current top down control system that we are currently living under.

The second aspect that stood out to me was the idea (that I introduced above) of a ‘co-ordinator’ class monopolising decision making, and therefore power in the current capitalist model. Albert’s new model dissipates this disparity in power by making work more varied, allocating a mix of empowering and routine jobs to everybody. No longer would there be only 20% of people doing all of the fulfilling work, with 80% doing the routine dis-empowering work. In a participatory economic society people would not monopolise empowering work, they would have to do some of the hard, socially beneficial work as well. Does this mean that a surgeon would have to spend some of his time answering the phone and cleaning the toilets then? Yes, it does. It also means that the person who spent 100% of their work life cleaning toilets or answering the phone will have increased opportunities to reach their full potential rather than wasting away their lives doing a job that sees them as a resource rather than as a human being.

I like this model. I like how it empowers people. I like how it is based on social good, on morality over greed and selfishness. I like how it sees the best in humanity and wants to help people reach the fullest of their potentialities rather than fit them into a disempowering system that exists to keep a tiny number of the population rich beyond belief whilst the rest have to struggle in a dehumanising system just to survive. I like how it takes the classic Marxist model of class conflict (Bourgeoisie versus the Proletariat) and adds a third class, that being the new 20% ‘co-ordinator’ class, a class that currently monopolises empowering work, and subjugates the majority through their increased levels of self confidence and access to decision making. But what I like best about this model is that it offers solutions to our current predicament that are non-centralised, democratic and based on morality and trying to make the world a better place for everybody.

Parecomic details this model in much more detail than I do here, so if you are in any way intrigued with what I have just discussed, then please buy the book. It’s part biography and part dissertation on the new economic model of participatory economics as outlined by Michael Albert. It’s a surprisingly entertaining, page-turner of a book, so don’t get hung up on the idea that you are going to be reading a dry academic book about economics. It’s clear, concise, enlightening, world expanding, entertaining and it will have you thinking about solutions to the current capitalist model of exploitation of the masses on behalf of the most ruthless, most privileged, most inhumane, most immoral, most selfish, most satanic of this planet’s population.

If you want solutions rather than complaints then this is a must purchase book. It fascinated me, and I read it as I would read any Stephen King page-turner. That says two things. Firstly, that writer Sean Michael Wilson and artist Carl Thompson did a fantastic job, and secondly, that Michael Albert has a model of change that resonates with truth.  Real change has to be economic change, not political rhetoric, and that is what is offered here. The ideas expressed within are world changing. If you have time for Batman then you certainly have time for this.

Rating: 10/10