The NFL is divided into two conferences, the AFC and the NFC. The NFC consists (sort of) of the NFL teams that have been around since 1920. The AFC consists (sort of) of the teams from the old AFL. The AFL was formed in 1959 as a competitor to the NFL, and by 1970 the two leagues were fully merged. The AFL-NFL merger is what produced the Super Bowl.

Currently, the AFC and NFC are further organized into four divisions each: East, West, North, and South. Each division has four teams, for a total of 32 NFL teams. The divisions have been reorganized and renamed over the years; the current alignment has been in effect since 2002.

In 1960, the Dallas Cowboys were formed as an NFL expansion team. At that time, the NFL consisted of 13 teams divided into Eastern and Western conferences with no further divisions. Cowboys’ founding owner Clint Murchison Jr. hired Tex Schramm to be the team’s first general manager.

Schramm, who died in 2003, was the Cowboys general manager for nearly 30 years. Schramm was a marketing genius. He formed the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. He got the Cowboys their yearly Thanksgiving gig.

But the most important thing Schramm did was lobby hard, and successfully, to get the Cowboys into the NFL’s Eastern conference. Originally, the NFL wanted to put the team in the West. But Schramm was driven to get maximum exposure for his team, and he understood that meant getting them into the East.

That wouldn’t have meant anything had the Cowboys not been winners. No one cares about teams that perennially lose. But Schramm didn’t just know marketing, he knew football too. He hired Tom Landry to be the first Cowboys coach. Twenty-nine years later, when Landry was unceremoniously fired by current owner Jerry Jones, he had five Super Bowl appearances and two victories to his credit.

But Jones has been glomming off of Schramm’s achievements. Jones does want to win — something that cannot be said about many sports owners, who don’t care how their teams perform as long as they’re making money. But that’s about where the credit Jones deserves stops.

Jones hired his college buddy Jimmy Johnson to succeed Landry as head coach. Johnson had won a national championship in college football as the head coach of the Miami Hurricanes in 1987. Johnson went on to win two Super Bowls with the Cowboys, and because of these three overall championships, some people have gotten the mistaken impression that Johnson was a great coach.

Tom Landry was a great coach. Johnson was a great motivator and a great evaluator of talent, but not a great coach. At the collegiate level, success is determined not by X’s and O’s, but by recruiting — if you can recruit the talent, you’ll be successful. If you can coach on top of that it’s a bonus, but it’s not required.

In 1989, the Minnesota Vikings made what was arguably the stupidest trade in the history of professional sports — a trade so monumental it has an entire Wikipedia entry devoted to it.¹ The Vikings basically gave their entire complement of draft choices to the Cowboys in exchange for Dallas running back Herschel Walker. With Johnson’s acumen in talent evaluation, he was able to use those myriad picks to build the Cowboys dynasty of the 90s – a team so loaded with talent that even a doofus like Barry Switzer could get it to a Super Bowl.

In 2003, Jones hired legendary NFL head coach Bill Parcells to run the team and stop the bleeding brought on by his own mid-90s mismanagement. Parcells improved the team greatly, but Jones just couldn’t keep his sticky fingers out of the cookie dough, bringing in the talented but obnoxious team-killing wide receiver Terrell Owens against Parcells’ will. Parcells left Dallas to work his magic in the front office of the now-much-improved Miami Dolphins, while current Dallas head coach Wade Phillips presides over a soft team disintegrating into irrelevancy.

Despite all this, the genius wrought by Tex Schramm lives on, and that’s why the Cowboys are football’s most consistently polarizing team. Some fans want to them to win, some want them to lose, but everyone has an opinion. That makes Dallas the NFL’s moneymaker – which makes them the Ass of the NFL. But what’s the relevance of this for left wingers?

Capitalist societies pretend they’re meritocracies. Rich people promote the mythology that we all get what we deserve. Now, plenty of people know this is a load of horse dung, but the mythology is still shoved down our throats from cradle to grave. Why? Well, if it’s true — if we all really do live in a meritocracy as the privileged would have us believe — then none of us have any call to begrudge the rich what they have. They’re rich because they deserve it, and if we don’t like it, then it’s our problem to deal with, and we obviously just need to stop whining and work harder.

Of course, capitalist societies aren’t meritocracies. Most people in them who are rich made their money the old-fashioned way: They inherited it. But this simple truth has to be constantly denied, and to the greatest extent possible people must be diverted from thinking about it and instead fed fairy tales about hard work leading to “success.”

Currently, the Tennessee Titans are the NFL’s only undefeated team at 9-0. Everyone acknowledges them to be the best team in the AFC and one of the two best teams in the league (along with the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants, who currently sit at 8-1). But when you watch ESPN’s SportsCenter, or listen to national sports talk radio, the story is always the Cowboys. No matter what media outlet it is, they virtually always lead with talk about Dallas.

In a true meritocracy, being 9-0 would count for more than being sexy. The fact that the Titans are a small-market team wouldn’t prevent them from being mentioned first or second on SportsCenter. Tennessee has earned that. Even if they lose the remainder of their games and finish the regular season at 9-7 (an impossibility), as of this writing they’re alone among the ranks of the NFL’s undefeated. Only being the defending champs, as the Giants are, should be able to compete with that.

But we don’t live in a meritocracy. We live in a market-based economy where profits and market share are king. The Dallas Cowboys name alone generates more money in our capitalist society than can the hard work and success of the small-market Titans.

Prior to this season, ESPN ranked the 32 NFL teams based on who has the “best fans.”² Other than the Philadelphia Eagles, ESPN’s top five of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Green Bay Packers, Cleveland Browns, Eagles, and Kansas City Chiefs contain four small media market teams.

But the real rankings (as far as the NFL, its advertisers, and national media outlets are concerned) are those from September by Forbes.com: the NFL team valuations. According to Forbes, the five most valuable NFL teams — which are also the five most valuable franchises in all of U.S. sport — are the Cowboys, Washington Redskins, New England Patriots, Giants, and the New York Jets.³ In case you hadn’t noticed, each of Forbes top five teams plays on the east coast, and three of them (Cowboys, Redskins, Giants) are in the NFC East.

You’ll know we’re living in a good society, or least a better one, when teams get more love for being perfect than they do for simply being worth $1.6 billion.

1. “Herschel Walker trade,” Wikipedia.
2. Matt Mosley, “NFL’s best fans? We gotta hand it to Steelers (barely),” August 29, 2008, ESPN.com.
3. Kurt Badenhausen et. al., “The Business Of Football,” September 10, 2008, Forbes.com.

In the NFL, wide receivers seem to need attention like green plants need sunshine. From New England Patriots wideout Randy Moss (who, to be fair, has settled down since his worst attention-seeking days when he played for the Minnesota Vikings) to Dallas Cowboys pass catcher Terrell Owens, Chad is just carrying on an NFL tradition of getting the TV cameras pointed at him.

Chad is actually a talented football player. He’s not a chump; he really does have game. But he hates playing in Cincinnati. He feels — correctly, as it turns out — that the Bengals organization isn’t committed to trying to field a championship-caliber team. Chad may want attention — and he does — but he also wants to win a Super Bowl. That won’t happen in Cincinnati, and Chad knows it.

Why won’t it happen? Because the Bengals are owned by Mike Brown, who is easily one of the worst owners in professional sports. (I’m an anti-capitalist, pro-pareconist. But I promise not to mention that even one time during the course of this essay.) Brown, the son of the legendary NFL coach Paul Brown, sees his team strictly as a business. He just wants his money.

See, if pro teams in any sport are going to be competitive for championships, then those teams’ owners need to spend money. It is possible for an owner to spend money on enough talent to compete for championships and still make money. But a team that wins cuts into an owner’s profit margin.

There are some owners — like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft — who do want winning teams and do pay for them. But Mike Brown only starting paying for talent a few years ago (after owning the team for decades) when, thanks to increasing fan outrage over a team nicknamed by ESPN the “Bungles,” the political situation in Cincinnati had deteriorated to the point that Hamilton County officials (which built Brown a shiny new football stadium and handed him the deed a few years earlier) had to lean on Brown to stop his habit of having his team have the lowest payroll in the NFL every year. It got so bad that, at one point, then-NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue even had a sit-down with Brown about it.

So Brown shelled out a few bucks and upgraded the offense. Quarterback Carson Palmer is a legitimate stud, running back Chris Perry might be pretty good, and number-two wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh is pretty good. But despite head coach Marvin Lewis’s defensive background, the defense sucks, and it’ll suck again this year. (Steeler fans can look forward to Pittsburgh winning the AFC North again.)

So against this backdrop, Chad decided last season was enough. He wanted out, and he made that known during the off-season. Now, if you’ve ever seen the movie The Godfather, you know two things: (1) The Godfather, while a very good movie, is a little overrated. (2) Never let personal matters influence business decisions.

All successful businesspeople understand the difference between what’s business and what’s personal. (If only Sonny Corleone had kept that in mind before heading over the causeway…) But while Paul Brown was a genius, his son Mike doesn’t have that problem. Mike Brown is an idiot, and he lets personal matters affect his business judgment. Considering his judgment isn’t that good to begin with, Brown needs all the brain cells working in his favor that he can get.

The Washington Redskins actually wanted to trade for Chad during the off-season. It was rumored that Washington offered Cincinnati a first-round pick and a third-round pick for Chad. If that’s true, it would have been a helluva deal for both teams. But Mike Brown refused to even speak with the Redskins about the trade. He wanted to show Chad who was boss.

Now look, I’m not saying you necessarily have to pull the trigger on that deal if you’re Brown. But if Washington really was offering a first and a third, you at least have to talk to the Redskins about it. That’s what Michael Corleone would have done. (Talk hell — Michael would pulled the trigger on that deal — figurately and literally, putting a bullet through Dan Snyder’s glasses-covered eye after the fact. But I digress…) Mike Brown let it get personal, because he’s a moron. He’s a rich moron. But a moron nonetheless.

Now Chad has gotten revenge. Chad’s self-annointed nickname is “Ocho Cinco.” His jersey number is 85, and since he knows just enough Spanish to be dangerous (since ocho cinco is actually “eight five” in Spanish, not eighty five), he wanted to put ocho cinco on the back of his jersey, in place of his birth name, Johnson. The Bengals said no. The NFL said, under league policy, only last names could go on the backs of jerseys.

Now, there are a lot of things one can fairly say about Chad — but stupid isn’t one of them. He may not be Albert Einstein, but he’s smarter than Mike Brown (okay, okay — that’s not saying much). Look, Chad really is a bright guy. And he’s actually not a bad guy. Unlike Randy Moss (who literally hit a cop with his car when he played in Minnesota) and Terrell Owens (who has made a career out of questioning the sexual orientation of his quarterbacks), Chad has never broken the law. He’s not a drug user, and he’s friendly with the fans. I actually like Chad (I wish I could say the same for the Bengals, but fuck them; I’m a Steeler fan).

Chad legally changed his name from “Chad Johnson” to “Chad Ocho Cinco.” (Haven’t you noticed I’ve been going through this entire piece calling him by his first name?) So now he can put ocho cinco on the back of his jersey.

How will this affect the Bengals? Quite simply, get ready for the return of the Bungles. Chad’s action will destroy what little chemistry the team still had. Chad has killed the team’s chances of winning squat this year. And I, for one, love it. Why? Because Mike Brown is a fuckhead, and he deserves what he’s about to get.

So what in the blue hell does all this have to do with the left? Well, you know that old expression “What goes around…”? How about “You reap what you sow?” Just like Mike Brown is about to get what’s coming to him, so too are the Democrats.

The Democrats and Barack Obama spent the last year shitting and pissing all over their rank-and-file supporters. The details need not be reviewed here. We shouldn’t even be talking about the Republicans right now, except to ask whether it’s going to be a burial or a cremation. But the mealy-mouthed, spineless, corporate-grubbing, and base-screwing-over Democrats are now getting their asses handed to them by one formerly little-known-Governor-turned-rock-star Sarah Palin. The Democrats deserve it. And I’ve got to tell you, I’m laughing my ass off watching it.

I watched a little of McCain and Palin on the stump this evening – or should I say, I watched John McCain gravy-training on the next Vice President. McCain is so obviously just a spectator during his own damn presidential campaign. He should be on his knees every night thanking Palin’s parents for conceiving her. McCain should change his name to American Tourister, because Palin is carrying him like a cheap piece of luggage.

And there’s not a damn thing the Democrats can do about it.

Obama left the Republicans the opening when he fucked his base over. Radical lefties tried to tell Obama, but he wouldn’t listen. Now he’s getting exactly what his arrogance deserves: a one-way ticket to the same mausoleum where the political corpses of Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry are interred.

So long, Barry. It was nice knowing ya. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out…

So how should the left approach her? It depends on which segment of the left we’re talking about. The liberal, coordinator-class, Democratic left doesn’t know what to do, and even if they were told what they should do (which I’m about to do), they still wouldn’t do it.

For the radical left, her nomination is largely irrelevant. Regular readers of radical left media already know why, but if you don’t, I’m going to tell you that in a moment also.

Liberals think “experience” means something. It doesn’t. No one outside of coordinator-class circles gives a damn. The fact that McCain talked about Obama’s “experience” is irrelevant. McCain had to talk about something, and no one cared then either, and McCain’s people knew it.

Since economic issues mean nothing (since they’re not allowed to), elections come down to likeability. Palin is easily the most likeable of the four candidates (i.e., Obama, Biden, McCain, and her). The fact that she’s a total MILF-hottie doesn’t hurt. And contrary to what many liberals think, she’s actually quite intelligent.

So for liberals, what’s the solution? The same thing that radicals have been saying for forever: Move to the left. Even with his whole affair thing, John Edwards would still have been a better choice than Obama – and yes, Edwards is no lefty. But Edwards at least talked to working people, and gave them some reason to vote for him. Obama gives working-class people no reason to vote for him (he actually gives liberal coordinators no reason to vote for him either, outside of the fact that he’s a Democrat and that he’s half-black).

If Obama were pushing a Canadian-style single-payer health-care system, it wouldn’t matter whom McCain had picked. Of course, if Obama were talking about that, he wouldn’t be the nominee, because he wouldn’t have been able to raise the cash necessary to compete and the media would have treated him like a loser from day one (See: Kucinich, Dennis).

But moving to the left is more than just issues (though it certainly is that also). Look at the Republicans: James Dobson, the guy who does Focus on the Family and whom fundamentalist Christians absolutely swoon over, was giving tepid support at best to McCain prior to his pick of Palin. On the other hand, the group Progressives for Obama was inventing reasons to support Obama when Obama didn’t even want them.

It’s the difference between pushing a string and pulling on it in order to move something the string is attached to. The right wing makes their candidates earn their support. They don’t beg and plead. On the other hand, it seems like the only thing liberals know how to do is piss, whine, cry, moan, complain – and especially beg and plead.¹²

If you have to do a “Progressives for ,” instead of doing it after the candidate has wrapped up the nomination, a better strategy – if you really want to win – would be to pick a candidate like Kucinich (whom I personally am not enamored with for reasons that go beyond the scope of this essay; however, there is no doubt he was the farthest left of the Democratic candidates, and massive left support for him would not have been, I don’t think, a bad tactical move) and get behind him strongly at least two years before the election, if not sooner.

Let’s put this another way: Suppose McCain wins, which I think is likely. If you must support somebody, then begin in December 2008 planning for the election in November 2012. Find out if Kucinich is planning on running again. If he is, start your Progressives for Kucinich website then, bust your ass for four years, and see what happens.

So why didn’t the liberals behind Progressives for Obama do that? Because for them, it’s not about winning change – it’s about electing Democrats. It’s about the home team. It’s about the gang colors. As Obama was making his expected (by radicals) moves to the right, the phenomenal left-wing writer Paul Street asked Obama supporters how far was too far?³ Their answer was, in effect, that it made no difference.

I’m pretty sure that if Obama said he wanted to build an extermination camp outside of Kansas City, Progressives for Obama would still support him. You think that’s a little harsh? Well, the U.S. already has very fine extermination camps up and running in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama doesn’t seem too concerned about it, and his supporters don’t seem too concerned that he’s not that concerned about it. Unless you think there’s some sort of qualitative difference between people in the Midwest and people in the Middle East, it seems a little hard to deny there’s at least a smidgeon of Hitlerian bloodlust here.

But, of course, even if the liberal left geared up four years early and tried to build massive support for someone like Kucinich, that’s still not what the right wing does. The right wing may have its favorites, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who the nominee is: That person still has to come kiss the ring of the godfather in order to win the don’s affection. If that person refuses to acquiesce, there are repercussions. Clearly, if liberals wanted to win change – which we’ve already established that they don’t – they’d stop behaving like an abused, co-dependent spouse, and they’d start behaving like an emotionally healthy person who either gets respect or quits the relationship.

So finally, what should radicals do about the nomination of Palin? The same thing we should have been doing all along: addressing the institutional structure of society, pointing out that better people on top of barbarous institutions won’t make barbarous institutions that much less barbarous. Yes, as Noam Chomsky says, small differences between major players in the U.S. can result in large differences in outcomes outside the U.S. because of the overwhelming power of the U.S. in world affairs.⁴ Those differences do matter.

But it’s the system that’s rotten, and it’s the system that must be changed. Democrats are war criminals too. Perhaps in the short term, a less-vile war criminal is preferable to a more-vile war criminal. But they’re all war criminals because the system demands that whoever sits atop it be a war criminal. If you had cancer and the doctor gave you morphine, that would be okay. However, if you had cancer and the doctor kept giving you morphine, without ever treating the underlying cancer … well, you don’t need to have an IQ larger than your shoe size to draw the appropriate conclusion.

What’s the solution? A full treatment is obviously beyond the scope of this essay. But I would be remiss if I did not point out one necessary component of any solution: participatory economics, or parecon for short.⁵ A huge part of the problem is capitalism. Soviet-style coordinatorism is not the answer. I claim parecon is. I further claim that without parecon the U.S. will, among other things, continue to be run by war criminals.

1. “Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama from Sociologists and Scholars Regarding Philadelphia Speech on Racism,” ZNet, March 26, 2008.
2. “Change We Can Believe In: An Open Letter to Barack Obama,” Common Dreams, July 30, 2008.
3. Paul Street, “Progressive Obamanists: Where Do You Draw the Line?”, ZNet, July 3, 2008.
4. See, for instance, Phil Gasper, “Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky’s Lesser-Evilism,” CounterPunch, March 20/21, 2004.
5. For more on parecon, I recommend Michael Albert’s Parecon: Life After Capitalism, Verso Press, 2003. Also good is here.

Whether it’s IMF meetings, trade meetings, or political conventions, elites know demonstrators will be there, and elites are prepared. Cops, tear gas, chain-link fences, and concrete barricades are just a few of the defenses they employ to keep demonstrators at bay — defenses backed up by media outlets that are only too happy to keep to the corporate storyline, rendering protests invisible.

It’s natural for protesters to initially think demonstrating at such elite gatherings is thing to do. After all, that’s where the elites are; that’s where the action is. But the high level of defensive preparation the rich and powerful bring to bear at such events argues for a different strategy.

“[T]he victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.”

So, the next time a large demonstration is planned, I have a suggestion: Ignore (physically, that is) the event being protested. Instead, pick softer targets: Media outlets.

Such a plan would address two problems: It would bypass the cops and the barricades, and it would also make it incredibly difficult for the media to ignore protests. And even if the police know such protests are coming, they can’t protect all media outlets.

Is there anyone on the left who doesn’t agree the media is part of the problem? If virtually all of us believe this, then why do we keep giving them a free pass? Instead, we should directly target TV stations and newspapers. There is no issue – war, health care, the economy, the environment – that couldn’t accommodate such a strategy. In fact, I would say such a strategy is demanded regardless of the underlying issue.

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”

Further, I believe such a strategy would yield a greater chance of success. When, say, a political convention is targeted, what is the goal? To change policies under discussion? If that’s the goal, how attainable is it? What would make it more attainable? I don’t know what a sufficient condition for its attainability is, but I know what a necessary condition is: increased public awareness of the issues elites are discussing inside.

Now, suppose it’s media outlets being targeted, as I am proposing. Now what’s the goal? I don’t know, but if it’s a left-wing goal, I’m pretty sure it has the same necessary condition. To put all this another way, no matter what the left hopes to accomplish, it’s going to need massive public awareness and support to do it. If the media won’t provide that awareness to the public, then we should make them. Everything else is, I would suggest, wheel spinning. Even if it’s not, it’s certainly rendered far less effective thanks to the anesthetizing power of the press. So let’s sap that power.

“You cannot stop innovation.”

Why is this so? To understand this, we must look at what the concepts really mean. In any economy, there are workers and consumers, and there are goods produced. Most people are both workers and consumers; their roles as workers entitled them to a share of goods produced, and their roles as consumers obligate them to a certain percentage of production. And in all of this, the goods produced and consumed have some intrinsic value (which must be determined by the allocation system).

What does any of this mean, in simpler terms? Let’s take a person at random in our economy (whatever economy that might be — capitalism, socialism, or parecon); call her Jane. Jane is a worker and a consumer. Every year, in her role as a worker, Jane produces a small pile of stuff. (All workers together produce a big of stuff.) And every year, in her role as a consumer, Jane consumes a small pile of stuff. (And all consumers together consume a big pile of stuff.)

The work Jane does in the economy to produce the small pile of stuff that she produces entitles her to consume a small pile of stuff. To use an analogy from a children’s story, since Jane has helped to bake the cookies, she’s entitled to eat a few of the cookies. But how many cookies is Jane entitled to eat? That is, how do we measure Jane’s contribution to the cookie baking process? For if we have no way to measure Jane’s contribution, we really have no way of knowing whether or not Jane is entitled to a few cookies, or nearly all the cookies.

This valuation of how many cookies Jane is entitled to is done by the economy’s allocation system. Different economic models have different allocation systems, so different allocation models will determine differently how many cookies Jane is entitled to eat.

Under capitalism, if Jane owns the oven in which the cookies are baked, she gets to eat many many many cookies — perhaps most of the batch. Under capitalism, this is true even if Jane does literally none of the work in baking the cookies. Simply by virtue of her owning the oven, she gets to dictate the terms under which cookie distribution occurs. Not surprisingly, Jane’s owning of the oven means she’s going to take most of the cookies for herself.

Okay, well, how does socialism work? In a socialist economy, no one owns the oven (or perhaps the oven is owned by the state. But no private individual owns the oven). But if Jane keeps the cookie recipe in her office, doesn’t let others have access to it, procures the ingredients herself, and delegates responsibility for cookie preparation in such a way as to de-skill and disempower the people doing the actual work (so one person cracks eggs all day, another only adds water, while someone else only uses the mixer), she will again be able to take the lion’s share of cookies for herself.

Actually, before going on, it is worth pointing out that this last example is going to occur in any economy which is either capitalist, centrally-planned socialist, or market socialist. It is worth taking a few moments here to briefly explain the differences and similarities between the three aforementioned models.

At the first level of approximation, those of us who are not economists can most easily classify economies by looking at three aspects of a given economic model: ownership, production, and allocation. That is, if we know who owns the productive resources, how workplaces are structured, and how resource allocation occurs, we can uniquely classify a various economic model.² But it’s important enough to review and highlight some of it here.

In capitalist economies, ownership is private (i.e., private individuals own the means of production), workplace structure is corporate (i.e., workers and de-skilled and jobs are organized hierarchically), and allocation is by competitive markets (with buyers and sellers wrangling over resources, sellers attempting to sell dear and buyers attempting to buy cheap). An example of a capitalist economy is the United States.

In market socialist economies, there are no capitalists. So productive resources are owned by the state. Further, workplace structure is corporate, and allocation is by competitive markets. An example of a market socialist economy is the former Yugoslavia.

In centrally planned socialist economies, there are still no capitalists. Workplace structure is still corporate. But here, allocation is by central planning, not by markets. In centrally planned economies, a relatively small group of people makes decisions about how resources will be distributed throughout the economy (though highly truncated markets might be used for resource distribution at the economy’s lowest levels).

This is not to suggest that every capitalist economy is identical to every other capitalist economy, or that every centrally planned economy is identical to every other centrally planned economy. Capitalism, for example, takes on a different flavor in the U.S. than it does in, say, Sweden. But the broad institution features of both U.S. and Swedish capitalism are the same, and can be compared and contrasted to the broad institutional features of socialism between the former Soviet Union and Cuba.

The real point I wish to make here is that, in every variety of capitalism or socialism, workplaces were and are structured with workers de-skilled and disempowered, dominated above by a coordinator class which monopolizes decision-making tasks. Once cultural and language differences are accounted for, an auto worker would very likely to unable to distinguish between work in a U.S. Ford factory versus a Soviet Lada plant versus a Yugoslav Yugo plant. However, the real reasons why these workplaces look the same varies from economy to economy.

In capitalist economies, workplaces are too large and complex for capitalists to run the workplaces themselves. So the capitalists hire a skilled and well-educated class of people — the coordinator class — to run the workplaces for them. The competitive pressures of a market economy force firms to fight with one another over resources, lest firms go out of business. So naturally, the coordinators seek to cut wages and benefits for workers below, increase the workload, and so on, in order to gain a competitive edge and save the firm from bankruptcy.

In a market socialist economy, there are no capitalists. Workers have formal control over their firm. But the firm still has to compete or die. Therefore, wages and benefits still have to be cut, workload has to be increased, and so on — otherwise there will be no firm. This is an unpleasant task, though, and workers would understandably prefer not to perform it themselves. So they hire a coordinator class of workers to do it for them. Once in place, coordinators will naturally seek to protect and enhance their privileged position within the firm, further deskilling and disempowering workers. And the whole thing snowballs, with worker power continually under attack.

In a centrally planned economy, planners make decisions. Those decisions, naturally, they expect to be carried out as they have instructed. Therefore, overwhelming power is given to managers to punish employees as they see fit, in order to control the operations of the workplaces to planners’ dictates. Hence, the entire economy becomes highly authoritarian. Since the larger society exists inseparably from its economy, the entire society necessarily takes on an authoritarian cast.

But from a worker’s standpoint, the differences between capitalism, market socialism, and centrally-planned socialism really aren’t that great. You go to work, a boss tells you what to do, and you go home — not uncommonly tired, angry, and/or depressed.

However, what we really want to do here is understand wages, prices, and money, and how they are necessarily part of any economy. So, returning to Jane, is she is an oven-owning capitalist, she overwhelmingly determines how many cookies she gets to eat. If she is workplace-managing coordinator, she still has a large say in her take of cookies — though the amount of cookies she gets to eat herself will naturally vary depending on whether or not someone above her owns the oven.

What about the workers who are doing the real work of baking the cookies? We know what happens there. Whether or not someone owns the oven, the workers are going to be left with whatever crumbs they are able to eke out. And in case it’s not yet obvious, the analogy is this: In an economy with market-based allocation or centrally-planned allocation, the workers are going to get screwed. They’re going to do most of the work, and see comparatively none of the rewards.

What we really need is an economy where people are rewarded — or remunerated, to use the technical term — based on their effort and sacrifice in baking the cookies. But the only way this can ultimately be determined is through wages and prices.

The real issue is not that an economy has wages and prices. Workers don’t get screwed because an economy has wages and prices. Workers get screwed because they labor under an economic model whose method of allocation sets wages and prices unfairly. That is, when the economy’s mode of allocation rewards the ownership of productive property (as in capitalism) or the monopolization of decision-making tasks (as in socialism), then the workers are necessarily going to get short-shrift.

Let’s return to Jane, only now let’s assume she’s just a worker, and not a capitalist or coordinator. Jane does some amount of work as part of her job. She makes a small pile of stuff in her role as a worker. Her labors entitled to consume a small pile of stuff. The size of the small pile of stuff she’s entitled to consume is represented by her wage. Now, if you don’t like the term “wage,” well, okay. Call it something else, if you must. But the concept is necessarily there, regardless of what you call it.

That is, during the year, Jane works. She makes a small pile of stuff. She is entitled, by virtue of her effort and sacrifice, to consume a small pile of stuff, is she not? Well, how do you know how much stuff she is entitled to consume? Something has to indicate that. That is, there must be some way of quantifying the amount of consumption Jane is entitled to.

If you could really wave a magic wand, and completely eliminate the concept of wages, how would you know how much stuff Jane could consume? Put another way, let’s say Jane wants to consume a clock radio. Is she entitled to do that? Perhaps your answer is, “Yes, certainly.” Well, okay, suppose Jane wants to consume a car. Is she entitled to do that? Perhaps your answer is, “Well, maybe.” Okay, now suppose Jane wants to consume something larger — say, Montana. Is Jane entitled to have all of Montana?

Your answer is probably, “Of course not.” But how do you know? If you’ve eliminated wages as a yardstick of consumption entitlement, you have no way of knowing whether Jane is entitled to have Montana or not.

You might say, “Yes, but Montana is obviously too much. It’s obviously too valuable for any one person to have.” But, if you’re like many of the socialists I’ve seen discuss this topic, not only have you eliminated wages, you’ve eliminated prices too. But the “value” of Montana is indicated by its price. Or the value of a car. Or a clock radio.

Understand it this way: With every product a society’s economy makes, resources go into making that product — resources that necessarily can’t be used to make some other product. Whether we are talking about material resources or labor resources, any resources an economy puts into the production of clock radios can’t be put into the production of automobiles.

Society has to make decisions about what it wants to produce. That is, an economy can’t just make everything. The Earth’s resources are limited. As a society, we have to make choices. Do we want more clock radios or more cars? Or perhaps neither. Maybe we want books instead. Or maybe we want some radios, but we’d also like some milk and cheese too. Or whatever.

Any economy has to decide how to allocate its resources to bring these outcomes about. In a centrally planned economy, the planners simply decide that that society’s economy will produce X number of clock radios, Y number of books, Z gallons of milk, and so on. In a market economy, firms compete with one another based on what level of profit they believe they can attain. An electronics firm will base its decision on whether to make more clock radios or more television sets (as well as what type of each) based on whatever it thinks will make it the most money.

But in neither a market economy nor a centrally-planned economy are resources allocated with any notion of what we might call “wise use” or “fair use” in mind. In a market economy, power and profit drive all calculations. In a centrally-planned economy, planners look to preserve and enhance their status, and their decisions are made with these ends in mind.

Participatory (or horizontal) planning, as described in the work on participatory economics done by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, is a new way for an economy to allocate resources.³ Participatory planning enables an economy to allocate resources based on the true social opportunity costs of goods. What is a good’s social opportunity cost?

Society derives benefits from making a certain number of radios. Society derives benefits from producing a certain number of books. But do we want more books and fewer radios? Or more radios and fewer books? How about less of both, and more milk instead? How about more of both, and less milk?

An item’s social opportunity cost represents its ideal level of production. If we produce so many radios that we end up losing out on the production of something society considers more valuable than the extra radios we’re making, then the social opportunity cost of radios exceeds their benefit.

That is, we can surely make radios. We can make lots and lots of radios. And keep making radios, until they pile up to the sky. We can do that. But if society thinks a certain amount of milk is more valuable than the extra radios we’re piling up, then those extra resources we’re dumping into making all those radios are being wasted. We’re making radios, yes, but society really doesn’t want all those radios. It would rather have a little bit of milk instead.

Of course, there is a certain level of radio production that makes sense. We don’t need to make radios until they pile all the way up to the moon, but if we only make, say, three radios for the entire economy for the entire year, that’s not necessarily a better outcome. Ideally, we’ll produce radios until the level of radio production meets some “reasonable” level of demand, without stupidly making so many radios that (a) we have no resources left over for milk, and (b) no one wants the extra radios we’re making anyway.

This “ideal” level of the production of an item (like radios) is the item’s social opportunity cost. It’s sort of like Goldilocks and the three bowls of porridge — we don’t want the level of an item’s production to be too much or too little, we want it to be just right.

The issue is complicated by the fact that we have all these items we’d like our economy to make, but only so much in the way of resources with which to do it all. Deciding how much of everything to produce is a big selection process. Some resources are easier to come by than others. Salt used in the production of tomato sauce might be easy to come by, but a particularly rare metal used in the construction of pacemakers might not be. And then, certain products like automobiles or cigarettes have pollution or health issues that really need to be accounted for in their cost, otherwise their social opportunity costs can’t be properly determined.

There’s a lot to keep track of when doing economic allocation. It is complicated, but not incomprehensible. A full treatment of participatory planning is beyond the scope of this essay. The point I wish to make here is simply that a good allocation system must be able to keep track of several variables. It must be transparent, and it must allow society to manage its own economic affairs without a small group of central planners making decisions, or the market forcing decisions on people solely in the interests of profitability and the survival of economic firms.

A good allocation system should allow us to determine the size of the small pile of stuff Jane can consume in a way that is fair. That is, Jane’s wage should be based on the effort and sacrifice she expends in her labors. On the other hand, a good allocation system should accurately value goods at the level of their true costs and benefits to society. That is, the prices of the items Jane consumes should reflect their true social opportunity costs.

These two concepts — wages and prices — necessarily exist in any economy. They are intrinsic to society-wide economic activity. The challenge is not to pretend they can be eliminated from an economy, any more than oxygen can be eliminated from the living human body. The challenge is devise an economic model that determines wages and prices accurately fairly. My claim is that parecon does this, while capitalism and socialism do not.⁴

One final note on the subject of money. “Money” means different things to different people. To some people, money means coins and dollar bills (and so on). Will this type of money exist in a post-capitalist economy? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the technological level of the society, most likely. In the U.S., it is reasonable to think that an implementation of parecon would probably not use coins and dollar bills. People’s day-to-day consumption could more be easily tracked using computer databases very similar to the ones used currently by the credit card industry. In less technologically advanced societies, perhaps coins and bills will be retained as markers of day-to-day economic activity.

This conception of money though is not particularly important to those who are considering questions of economic vision. That is, one when considers what to replace capitalism with, thinking about whether or not to retain coins isn’t really very deserving of one’s time. It’s not the important way in which to understand the concept of money.

The important way is the way I just described: wages and prices. When thinking about economic theory and post-capitalist options, this is the conception of money you want to keep in mind. Whether or not people use coins (the other, more popular conception of money) is probably, at best, a third-order concern.

1. Eric Patton, “An Introduction to Participatory Economics,” Dissident Voice.
2. Eric Patton, “Assessing Economic Options,” Dissident Voice.
3. See, for example, Albert and Hahnel’s The Political Economy of Participatory Economics, Princeton University Press, 1991.
4. Parties interested in further assessing this claim’s validity are recommended to read Michael Albert’s Parecon: Life After Capitalism, Verso Press, 2003.

But show me an established organization willing to do that. Show me an organization that’s been around a little bit, where money is coming in and people are getting paid, where people in nice clothes are making decisions – show me those decision-making people giving up some of their authority. I have yet to meet anyone who believes in social justice that much.

As a working-class person, I think I hate Marxists more than anyone. I know what politicians and CEOs are going to do. I expect it. I know what Marxists are going to do too, but unlike politicians and CEOs, Marxists claim to represent me. With friends like Marxists, working people do not need any enemies. I would like to read an article by a Marxist saying the following:

Look, we think working people get a raw deal in this country. Just because working people are stupid doesn’t mean they should be treated badly. The working-class deserves new, kinder, nicer bosses than the mean old capitalists. We propose that we, Marxists, be those kinder new bosses.

So, if you doltish working people will give your loyalties to us, we will protect you and keep you safe. You’ll still be doing all the shit work that you are now; you’ll just be doing it under our overarching supervision. And since we’re nicer than the mean, old capitalists of the world, we think you should trust us.

That’s really what it comes down to. Marxists think the working class is stupid. I see it over and over every time I get an e-mail from one of them. Every time I have a discussion with them, it’s always the same thing. I have yet to meet a Marxist who doesn’t, deep down, think that working people need to be led in their own best interest.

Maybe you could sell that stuff to the working class 100 years ago. I don’t know. But I’m telling you right now: As long as you think that working people are stupid sheep and that you should be their shepherd — as long as the left is structured that way (because, right or wrong, when I look up, it sure looks to me like most of the left is structured that way) — you’re never going to be able to build movements large enough to tackle, say, global warming or U.S. imperialism.

In my opinion, though, I don’t think Marxists are interested in combating global warming or U.S. imperialism. I think they’re interested in being big fish in little ponds. I think they’d like to be big fish in big ponds, but since they’re stuck in little ponds, they settle for being big fish there instead. I do not believe Marxists are seriously interested in any revolution that doesn’t leave them at the top of the food chain.

Listening to a Bush, Barack, or Hillary talk about anything bothers me less than listening to a Marxist claim to care about working people. If you deny the existence of the coordinator class, and if you refuse to talk about balanced job complexes, you are no friend of the working class.

Coordinatorist organizational structures do not serve the interests of the working class. They serve the interests of the coordinator class. Denying the existence of the coordinator class also serves that class’s interest. And to be completely honest with you, I’m not sure I can think of anything that makes me angrier than that denial.

Finally, one more time let me say the following: If I claimed to be for women’s rights, yet I said I was opposed to abortion rights, no one (on the left) would consider me to be a supporter of women’s rights. This logic is correct. If you do not support women’s control over their own bodies, you’re not a supporter of women’s rights.

In the same manner, if you cannot acknowledge the existence of the coordinator class, and if you do not support the concept of balanced job complexes (and crucially, if you’re not willing to work one yourself), then you are not a supporter of working-class liberation. You might be a supporter of better working conditions (or whatever) for the working class. But you are not a supporter of working-class liberation.

Supporting women’s reproductive rights is a necessary condition to support women’s liberation. Supporting balanced job complexes and coordinator-class acknowledgment is a necessary condition to support working-class liberation.

So I get this call from this temp agency I’ve been working for, and this person tells me I need to be sure to go down to this company I interviewed with earlier in the week to do my “background” (read: drug screen) check. Now, I did this already yesterday, after someone from the temp agency called me the day before about it.

Keep in mind, this temp agency’s office isn’t that big. It’s three people: two people who do the placements, and one secretary. It’s not the left hand has no way of knowing what the right hand is doing in an office of three people.

Now, what I want to say to this particularly overbearing recruiter who’s just called me is, “Look, I’m not 12.” Y’all already called me. Jesus god, let it drop already. If I don’t go, that should tell you something.

But I keep my mouth shut. Am I just a big puss? Or am I correctly thinking, y’know, this person who determines whether or not I get future work might not the best person in the world to piss off?

I can be a pretty obnoxious person, as all my ex-girlfriends will gladly tell you. But really, being aggressive and in-your-face isn’t really my style. I’d rather stew about it and then write internet articles behind your back.

This person at the temp agency is pretty overbearing, I’ve noticed. This person must be tough to work for. I recall the first day I went to my first assignment for this temp agency. The directions they give you pretty much suck, so I’ve learned to love Mapquest even more than I already do. But for this first gig, I figured, oh heck, their directions must be pretty good, right?

Wrong. They told me two traffic lights. Two? By the time I got to where I was supposed to be, I counted at least seven. I’m serious. I called twice to make sure I wasn’t completely lost. I commented — innocently, not in an accusative tone (and trust me, I know how to do accusations really well — just ask any of my ex-girlfriends) that perhaps those directions needed to be updated.

The secretary to whom I was speaking informed me that she didn’t write the directions. Well, okay. I didn’t say you wrote them. I don’t actually care who wrote them. I just think they need to be changed. The pastures and cattle the original direction-writer remembers from this area have been replaced by strip malls and — Hey look, there’s Sam’s Club!

But later (much later), as I thought about it, I realized it must be tough being a secretary in an office with this particular recruiter, who is basically the boss of the office. (Note to any socialists who happen to be reading: It’s called “the coordinator class.” I recommend y’all do some reading on it.)

That kind of stuff makes you walk on eggshells. It makes you think people are accusing you of things even when they’re really not. Honestly, that secretary’s job must suck. I get one phone call, and I’m annoyed. That secretary is there, what, 40 hours a week? Ick.

And what about that recruiter’s kids? I am assuming said recruiter has kids, though I can’t swear on a stack of Bibles that this is the case. But if someone, anyone, treats their professional underlings in this manner, how do you suppose such people treat their children? If workers have difficulty defending themselves against coordinators, how much more difficult is it for children to defend themselves against parents? (Not to digress too much here, but in a good society, it’s simply not possible for children to be considered private property. They must be considered a precious public resource. And entirely new non-nuclear modes of child-rearing must be developed.)

But of course, chances are good that that’s how this recruiter got that way in the first place. Apples don’t fall far from trees. If we were to examine this recruiter’s childhood experiences at home, what would we find?

And how about me? What makes me think I can perceive any of this? You know what they say. It takes one to know one.

People that know me (both of them) know that I’m a fanatical pareconist. But society is more than economics. Society is, among other things, kinship too. And nothing in kinship relations — arguably nothing at all in any society — is as important as how children are raised. (I have no kids — a fact for which my unborn progeny should be extremely grateful.)

Children are not private property. I mean, in our currently-existing society, they are. But they shouldn’t be. In a society whose economic relations are determined by participatory economics, whatever that society’s kinship relations look like, they can’t include the slotting of children into private property roles. Children are a public resource.

I hate Hillary Clinton more than I possibly tell you, but the title of that book she wrote way back when (It Takes a Village To Raise a Child — and no, I did not read it) is actually accurate. Children would do much better to have a plethora of adult role models to choose from, than to be restricted to two … or one.

I don’t know what kinship relations in a pareconish society should look like, but they can’t be nuclear. Some way has to be found for children to be raised by lots of people. I’m sorry, but, other than when it comes to medical records, genetics is for the birds. Biology no more determines parenthood than … well, if I were smarter, I could come up with some real witty analogy. But I’m not that clever.

But I smart enough to know that our society’s fetish with equating parenthood with biology is not only ridiculous, it’s damaging. I don’t know for certain if this is true or not, but during my fundamentalist Christian years (a very long time ago), I remember one a preacher saying once that it was the Greeks who read “son of God” as a genetic statement. This preacher said that, in Jewish culture of the time, anyone could be anyone else’s son if he were loyal (or some such) to that person (and yes, I did notice, even at that time, that there was no mention of daughters here).

Now, I have no idea what the preacher’s overall point was, but I remembered what struck me as the important part. Perhaps he made it up entirely (I’ve never researched it to try to find out). But I hope it’s true. I hope that, somewhere out there, even if only in the past, there are or were people smart enough to realize that — again, medical histories excepted — genetics mean (or should mean) absolutely zero when it comes to parenting. Children don’t need to know who their “real daddy” (or whatever) is. They need emotionally healthy adult role models to look after them and care for them. Nuclear child-rearing arrangements don’t make that utterly impossible, but they certainly mitigate heavily against it.

So, why we’re throwing out capitalism and replacing it with parecon, let’s also throw out the nuclear family and find some more communal (and just for the record: I hate socialism) way to raise children. It would be better for all of us. Especially the kids.

And I hope that drug screen missed the fact that I drank three pots of coffee and an entire two-liter of pop yesterday.

Participatory economics, or parecon for short, is a new way for a society to organize its economic activity. In the United States, our economy is currently organized under a capitalist model. In the old Soviet Union, economic activity was organized using what is commonly referred to as socialism.

Parecon, however, is neither capitalism nor socialism. Both of those economic models are classist. That is, in both capitalism as well as socialism, working-class people have little-to-no say over their workplaces and generally follow orders given to them by others. Unlike capitalism and socialism, parecon is classless. In a parecon, workers manage their own affairs.

How is that possible?

A full answer to this question requires detailing the entire parecon model. However, to help you see the believability of the claim, let me first just highlight one aspect of parecon. It’s not the only aspect worth highlighting, but it is one of the most important. It’s called the “balanced job complex.” You most likely have never heard of a balanced job complex, or BJC, before. But it is one of parecon’s most important facets, and one of the biggest drivers of parecon’s classlessness.

See, every workplace is just a set of tasks. Tasks are bundled to create jobs. In both capitalist as well as socialist workplaces, particular types of tasks are bundled to create particular types of jobs. So, for example, cleaning-type tasks are bundled to create the job of janitor. Filing- and reception-type tasks are bundled to create the job of secretary. And decision-making tasks are bundled to create the job of manager.

As a result, capitalist workplaces and socialist workplaces are virtually indistinguishable. If you were a worker in a U.S. Ford factory in Detroit, and you were suddenly transported to a Soviet Lada plant in Moscow, you would probably not be able to tell the difference based on the nature of the work alone. Yes, there would be obvious language differences, cultural difference, and so on. But just based on the nature of the job itself, you most likely would not know which plant you were in unless somebody told you.

Those tasks that are bundled to create jobs like janitor, secretary, or manager don’t have to be bundled that way. We could just as easily re-apportion the tasks so that everyone has to do their fair share of unpleasant or undesirable work, and so that everyone gets to do some of the more empowering work.

This is the essence of a BJC. There is a bit more that actually needs to be said about BJCs, but for now, I just want to try to convince you that classlessness is possible. Most working-class people are very cynical, and justifiably so. But my claim is that classlessness is possible, and that parecon is in fact a classless model. Balanced job complexes are one of the first things to understand when assessing these claims.

Okay, wait a minute. You’re telling me that jobs in a parecon are fundamentally different than jobs in either capitalism or socialism? You’re telling me there’s a different division of labor?

Yes. Both capitalists as well as socialists organize their workplaces in the same fundamental way. They both take the tasks that are disempowering, unpleasant, rote, onerous, or perhaps even dangerous, and they bundle those tasks to create jobs that typify their workplaces. Then they skim off the creamy tasks and bundle them to create jobs like manager, lawyer, doctor, and engineer.

See, this unequal division of labor gives rise to a class of workers that socialists never tell you about: the coordinator class. In a capitalist economy, workplaces are privately owned by a class of people commonly referred to as capitalists (or sometimes simply owners). And people like janitors, secretaries, assembly-line workers, and the like are referred to as the working class (or sometimes simply workers). It’s true that capitalists and workers comprise two possible classes in an economy.

But there is a third class possible in an economy, the coordinator class. Coordinators are those people who do not own the workplaces, but who run the workplaces. Members of the coordinator class typically have a great deal of say over their own working conditions, as well as the conditions of working-class people below them. As a rough estimate, the working class makes up maybe 80% of a capitalist economy, coordinators 18-20%, and capitalists 1-2%. Examples of the coordinator class include doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers, college professors, accountants, and architects.

Now, in socialist economies like the old Soviet Union, there were no capitalists. Soviet workplaces were owned publicly, not privately. But socialism was not (and still is not) a classless economic model. Why? The answer is because ownership of workplaces is not the only way class divisions economy can arise in an economy. Class divisions can also arise through an unequal and unfair distribution of labor.

The socialists rightly got rid of workplace ownership by private individuals. However, the socialists did not get rid of the unfair division of labor that gives rise to the coordinator class. That’s why the Soviet Union did not have a classless economy. It is this unfair division of labor that parecon corrects through the inclusion of balanced job complexes (as well as some other factors we still have to get to).

Despite what socialists claim, socialism has never been about the working class. Here’s one way you can think about it: Capitalism is the economic theory of the capitalist class; that is, capitalism is really all about the economic interests of the owning class. Socialism is the economic theory of the coordinator class; that is, socialism is really all about the economic interests of the coordinator class.

And participatory economics, which is a fairly new economic model, having been introduced in only 1991, is the economic theory of the working class.

Okay, having balanced job complexes is necessary to have a classless economy. Does that mean all we need to do is switch our workplaces over to BJCs to make the economy classless?

No. BJCs are necessary, but not sufficient, to guarantee a classless economy. If we really want to have an economy that is classless, we must also address the way resources are allocated. Let me explain what I mean.

Every economy has producers, and every economy has consumers. In addition, every economy has a mechanism for distributing resources among those producers and consumers. In the United States, the mechanism we currently use for resource allocation is called the market.

When I say market, I don’t mean the grocery store. I mean a mechanism where producers and consumers come together over and over again in roles as buyers and sellers of goods and services. So the way the market allocates resources is determined by the ways in which buyers buy and sellers sell.

For purposes of contrast, consider how resources were allocated in the Soviet Union. There, a group of bureaucrats called planners got together and simply decided how resources were going to be disbursed throughout the economy. The mechanism of allocation used in the U.S.S.R. was called central planning.

So markets and central planning are two ways that an economy has for resource allocation. It turns, though, that both markets as well as central planning impose class divisions on economies in which they are used. That is, even if we in the U.S. were to switch over our workplaces from the current division of labor to a division of labor utilizing BJCs, ultimately the market would re-impose class divisions back on us.

The reason for this is because firms in any market economy must compete in order to survive. For example, if GM moves its plants from Detroit to Mexico in order to take advantage of cheaper Mexican labor, then Ford must follow suit. If Ford does not follow suit, then GM will out-compete Ford, and then there will no longer be a Ford.

Similarly, suppose one firm switches to BJCs but another firm does not. Presumably, the firm utilizing BJCs will want its members to earn a living wage, have good benefits, and so on. (Some things really should be said about wages, prices, money, and so on. Unfortunately, I won’t get to that in this essay.) The non-BJC firm will likely not feel the same way.

We can already see in our market economy what happens as companies continually cut wages, slash benefits, outsource jobs, and eliminate permanent positions in favor of hiring temporary workers. Companies do this because the logic of a market economy demands that they do, otherwise they’ll be out-competed and then they’ll go out of business.

Even if a few firms switch to BJCs, if the mechanism of resource allocation used in the economy is still markets, these pressures on firms to compete or die will still exist. Indeed, even if literally every firm switches to BJCs, if market allocation is still the rule, then again, competition among firms will eventually force companies to abandon those BJCs in order to survive.

Simply put, markets are utterly incompatible with a classless economy. You can have a classless economy, or you can have a market-based economy. You can’t have both.

Centrally planned economies are also not classless, but for different reasons. Centrally planned economies are, by nature, highly authoritarian. Since planners make decisions about what happens in the economy, the only way those planners can ensure that their dictates are carried out is if the whole economy takes on a highly authoritarian cast.

That is, the planners aren’t interested in what workers or consumers think about their decisions. The planners only want obedience. Central planning demands obedience. If you’re a worker, and you have ideas about your firm could be run more efficiently, the planners aren’t interested. They’ve already decided. As a worker, your only job is to do as you’re told.

The upshot here is that, while BJCs are absolutely crucial in order that we may have a classless economy, so too is a new method of allocation also required.

Okay, so to have a classless economy, we need balanced job complexes. We also need a way to allocate resources that is neither markets nor central planning. So if we’ve eliminated markets and central planning from consideration, how then are we going to allocate resources?

We’re going to use a new method of allocation called participatory (or horizontal) planning. For the most part, we are all workers and consumers at the same time. That is, we have a role within the economy as a producer, and at the same time we also have a role within the economy as a consumer.

In our role as a producer, or worker, we make a proposal as to how much we wish to produce for the upcoming year. In our role as a consumer, we make a proposal as to how much we wish to consume for the upcoming year. In effect, we each make two lists: a “to-do” list, and a “wish” list.

We then tally both lists across society, generating economy-wide “to-do” and “wish” lists. Chances are exceedingly good that the overall wish list is longer than the overall to-do list. Before we’d be able to proceed, we’d need to bring the lists in line with one another.

So, based on the available information, producer and consumers make new proposals. Consumers reduce the levels of their requests, and workplaces increase what they propose to produce. Consumers and producers repeat these processes until “to-do” and “wish” lists are brought in line.

Please understand, I am leaving out some important details here. Allocation isn’t rocket science. But at the same time, it’s a little more complicated than I’m making it sound. I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you. I’m trying to give you just the bare essentials necessary for even believing a classless economy is possible. If you find yourself skeptical that what I’ve described is sufficient to properly explain allocation, that’s a good thing. You should be skeptical, because what I’ve described is not sufficient. I’m just trying to help you be a little less cynical than you probably (understandably) are when you hear me claim a classless economy is really possible.

Certainly, more can and should be said about allocation. But for now, the important point is that people, in their dual roles and workers and consumers, make proposals about what they wish to produce and consume. It might be worth noting that, at the same time people make these proposals, they are also proposing the length of their work week. I know that’s not obvious yet, but for right now I hope you are willing to accept that it might be true. Hey, when’s the last time anyone gave you any real control over how many hours you worked?

Okay, we have balanced job complexes, and we have a new way to allocate resources. I realize more needs to be said here, especially about allocation, later on. So I’m willing to reserve judgment for the time being until I hear more. But what about how much money I make? I mean, I get that I’m a consumer. But how do I know how much I can consume? Do some people get to consume more than me? What determines any of this?

The questions you are raising are important ones. I’d like to first introduce a new term here, one that I think will make it a little easier for us to talk about these issues. The term is “remuneration.” It’s a term that economists use. I hate to start tossing around $50 words, but I think in the long run it will make understanding this topic a little easier.

Your remuneration is the level of consumption you are entitled to. In today’s economy, what I’m calling remuneration is really just the size of your paycheck. If you make a lot of money, you’re someone who is highly remunerated. If you don’t, then you’re not.

But what is it in any economy that determines the extent to which a person is remunerated? That is, whether we’re talking about capitalism, socialism, or parecon, what determines how much anybody is entitled to consume?

Historically, what people have is what they can take. Bargaining power. Brute force. Whatever. If you’re a professional athlete, few people can do what you can do, so you’re able to command a lot of money. After all, if the organization doesn’t hire you, who else are they going to get who can throw a 95 mph fastball, or throw a football 60 yards downfield on a frozen rope?

Or suppose you’re a big corporation selling products made by Chinese prison labor. You’ve got smaller competitors trying to compete with you. So you just lower your prices to levels your competitors can’t match, wait for them to go under, and then you’ve got a monopoly and you can do whatever you want.

Vlad the Impaler would probably have appreciated a capitalist economy. The Harvard Business School certainly does.

But socialism, even though it is not the same as capitalism, isn’t hugely different either. Not if you’re looking up from the bottom, anyway. The planners sit in nice offices, make big and important decisions, then go home at the end of the day to nicer homes than what you live in (if you’re a Communist peon.) Maybe Soviet planners didn’t have the wealth that big U.S. capitalists have, but they weren’t fishing their meals out of trash cans, either.

Do any of these important people, in either the U.S. or the former Soviet Union, deserve to live so high on the hog? To ask is to answer. Okay, so how should people be remunerated?

Rather than people getting what they can take, parecon proposes something more fair: People should be remunerated based only on their own effort and sacrifice. So, for example, if someone is going underground and mining coal all day (an extremely dangerous job), while someone else is sitting behind a desk playing computer solitaire and occasionally reading important documents, who’s really expending more effort and sacrificing more?

Put another way, solely on the basis of effort and sacrifice, who deserves to be more highly remunerated: a doctor or a garbage collector? A lawyer or a janitor? An investment banker or a nurse aide? In an economy with jobs like we currently have in the U.S., if remuneration were for effort and sacrifice only, the wage scales we have would be completely reversed. Actors would not be commanding 25 million per picture, while others were working temporary jobs on assembly lines.

But a participatory economy would not have jobs like the U.S. does currently. In a parecon, everyone would work a balanced job complex. What this is means that, in terms of effort and sacrifice, everyone’s job complex would be comparable to everyone else’s job complex, across the entire economy.

Would job complexes ever be able to be perfectly balanced, like some mathematical equation? Of course not. But it is certainly possible to look at work tasks across the economy, assess them on the basis of effort and sacrifice, and re-group them into jobs which are comparable to each other on these bases.

How do we know this? Well, every company already does this, except in reverse. Currently, companies look at the tasks in their workplaces, and bundled the undesirable into unpleasant, low-paying jobs, while bundled the more desirable and pleasant tasks into empowering, high-paying jobs. But what can be made, in this case, can be just as easily unmade. And then re-made. We may not be able to undo gravity, but we can certainly undo (and redo) the way we do our work. Perfectly? No. But over time, there’s no question we can create work roles that come closer and closer to being balanced for effort and sacrifice.

So if everyone is working in a BJC, comparable to everyone else’s BJC, then effort and sacrifice can be measured largely, if not entirely, in terms of hours worked. In this system, if you work 25 hours a week, you’re entitled to a level of consumption which is higher than someone who works only 20 hours a week. If someone works 30, they’re entitled to more consumption than you.

Now, who decides the length of the work week? We all do, as part of the allocation process. When you propose a level of work and consumption for yourself, you are also implicitly proposing a number of hours per week you wish to work.

Think of production and consumption requests as two piles of stuff. You propose to produce a pile of stuff, and you propose to consume a pile of stuff. That pile of stuff you propose to produce is going to require a certain number of weekly work hours in order to produce it all. And that pile you propose to consume will, likewise, require a certain number of hours worked per week in order for it to be produced.

So, as part of the allocation process, if you want a really big pile of stuff, that’s okay. It just means that you are implicitly saying to everyone in the entire economy, “Here’s how many hours I think we should all work this year.” On the other hand, if you want to consume less, you are saying to the entire economy, “Here’s how many hours I think we should work this year. We won’t have as much stuff, but we’ll have more free time.”

As part of the allocation process, eventually society will settle on an overall consumption pile for the entire economy, and an overall production pile for everyone. Society will also be settling on an average work week for everyone — for purposes of example, let’s say 25 hours.

So everyone will work an average of 25 hours. But some people want more stuff, so some of them work 30 (or perhaps even more) hours per week. Other people don’t care about stuff, they’d rather have more time with family and friends. So they work only 20. But since everyone across the entire economy is working a balanced job complex, everyone’s overall effort and sacrifice can be measured largely (if not entirely) in terms of hours worked. So the length of your work week determines your level of remuneration in a parecon.

Okay, let me see if I have this straight: We all work a BJC, so everyone’s work situation is comparable to everyone else’s. The allocation process, which you are calling participatory planning, determines how much stuff the economy produces, and also how much we all work. But individually, some people might choose to work less or more, depending on their own individual preferences. And remuneration in a parecon is strictly for effort and sacrifice. But since the economy is built to take effort and sacrifice into account, the most important thing to measure here is simply hours worked. Surely there’s more though?

Of course there’s more. I’m not trying to give you the full picture of participatory economics. For that, you really do need to read Michael Albert’s Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Verso Press, 2003) — the definitive parecon text. I definitely can’t do justice to the subject in a presentation as short as this.

I only have one goal here: I’m trying to give you a reason to think that a classless economy is possible, and without you having to swim through a tome to believe it. There’s so much more that needs to be said. However, if you think that further investigation is worth your time, I recommend you read Albert’s book, or perhaps you might check out some of the other essays that have been written about parecon, which can be found on the internet at the parecon website.

This is not simply a matter of whether an employer is conservative, liberal or even progressive. It is really about class politics and class struggle. In the 1980s I helped to organize a non-profit agency in Boston. The employer, who at first glance seemed like a good-natured liberal, was VEHEMENTLY against a union forming. This individual, who saw himself as, at least a liberal, if not a progressive, was in favor of unions forming anywhere… except in his workplace. ¹

Often the words are not met by action. For example, in the debate² between ZNet’s Michael Albert and Socialist Worker’s Alan Maass, Maass writes:

[B]alanced job complexes sound like an excellent idea. It was Karl Marx, after all, who said — in an affront to vegetarians everywhere — that communism would make it possible “to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” I would only suggest that “balanced job complexes” should be seen as a positive good in themselves, rather than something necessary to prevent the rise of “coordinators.” After all, it will never be possible for everyone to do every task that needs accomplishing in society. The key to preventing the rise of privileged “coordinators” is democratic control over production.³

In response to this, Albert asks Maass:

I am very happy to hear that you think “balanced job complexes sound like an excellent idea.” If so, however, does that mean that your newspaper and party utilize them? Shouldn’t they — both to experiment with structures that can become part of a new economy and to provide evidence of their commitment to the new goals, as well as to enjoy the benefits? What do you think?⁴

Maass never responded to Albert’s questions. I never received any response to my email request for comment either. That’s very telling. It’s just like Fletcher’s reporting about the liberal employer whose workplace he helped organize in the 1980s. In Fletcher’s article, we have an example of an employer who is apparently an avowed liberal and all for workers’ rights — just not fully for his workers. With Maass, we have an avowed socialist who claims to be for workers’ rights — just not fully for his workers.

As I have already argued, balanced job complexes are as fundamental to workers’ rights as reproductive control is to women’s rights.⁵ Yet the topic is one that seems little debated among socialists. In an article that explains “why a socialist society would produce a flowering of universal creativity,” Paul D’Amato writes:

Even more odious tasks, such as collecting garbage and mining, are far less odious if the workers have control over the work process. The combination of control over working conditions and processes, the application of the safest and fastest methods, the reduction of work hours, and finally, the rotation of the population into those jobs so that no single person is stuck with it would make even this kind of work far more enjoyable than it is now.⁶

No. No, no, no. A million times, “No.” I don’t want to hear about job “rotation.” If you’re claiming to represent the working class, I want to hear about balanced job complexes. This thing you call “rotation” is not good enough. The best explanation of why is given by Albert when he talks about balanced job complexes:

The aim is not to eliminate divisions of labor, but to ensure that over some reasonable time frame people should have responsibility for some sensible sequence of tasks for which they are adequately trained and such that no one enjoys consistent advantages in terms of the empowerment effects of their work.

We do not mean that we have doctors who occasionally clean bed pains [sic], nor secretaries who every so often attend a seminar. Parading through the ghetto does not yield scars and slinking through a country club does not confer status. Short-term stints in alternative circumstances — whether slumming or admiring — do not rectify long-term inequities in basic responsibilities. [emphasis added] We do mean, instead, that everyone has a set of tasks that together compose his or her job such that the overall implications of that whole set of tasks are on average like the overall implications for empowerment of all other jobs. ⁷

This is what I want to hear from anyone who would claim to represent the working class, and who would claim to be fighting for their rights. I’ll decide whether or not I think you’re fighting for my rights. And if you’re avoiding the subject of balanced job complexes like a hot potato, I say you’re not.

One last thing — and this is actually true across the entire left. When Albert asks Maass if he will incorporate balanced job complexes into Socialist Worker, Albert is engaging in strategic thinking and planning. It’s completely within the power of Socialist Worker to implement balanced job complexes right now. So why not do it?

Doing this would be an excellent way of beginning the hard work necessary to create a new society from the ground up. It would be inspiring, and, over time, it would be something that working people would respond positively to as they learned more about it. It’s simply the right thing to do.

At the very minimum, a conversation about this type of strategic thinking is in order. It’s time to honestly assess where we are, where we want to go, and how we might go about getting there. If we can’t engage in valid self-analysis, openly and honestly, then how can we possibly ever expect to win anything?

1. Bill Fletcher, “Why should employers have a role in deciding whether workers have unions?” zmag.org.
2. Michael Albert and Alan Maass, “Debating Marxism,” zmag.org
3. Alan Maass, “First Reply To Albert’s Opening Essay,” zmag.org
4. Michael Albert, “Albert Rejoins,” zmag.org
5. Eric Patton, “Fundamental Workers’ Rights,” dissidentvoice.org
6. Paul D’Amato, “The economics of laziness,” socialistworker.org
7. Michael Albert, Parecon: Life After Capitalism, Verso Press, 2003, p. 104.