The following is a slightly revised transcript of the Testimony Presentation by Michael Albert delivered at the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2002

 

First, I want to thank the organizers of the WSF for having me here to give a personal testimony, and for conceiving and organizing this monumental event. I have been involved with gatherings of tens, hundreds, and even a couple of thousand folks at a time – but this event, here in Porto Alegre, is truly extraordinary.

 

We all owe the organizers our thanks and continuing support – and for me, to be able to come here, meet so many wonderful people, learn from so many wonderful people, and even try to offer some useful comments to so many wonderful people is both humbling and inspiring. So thank you.

 

When I was much younger I was powerfully moved by the words of Bob Dylan’s songs – which still inspire me greatly. One song that I like in particular is called When the Ship Comes In. It is a beautiful embodiment of the idea of winning a new world – our ship coming in.

 

More recently, I have grown to like the music of the Canadian activist poet, Leonard Cohen, and particularly a song called, Democracy Is Coming to the USA. It too is about some of the implications of winning a new world.

 

And so, from these inspirational poet-activists I arrived at a title for this testimony…

 

When the Ship Comes in, Democracy is Coming to the USA.

 

I first became political in the struggle against the War in Vietnam. Very early in my awakening I remember going to a beautiful old church…for a draft card turn in, in downtown Boston. I think it was perhaps 1966. I was up in the balcony. Students and others walked up to the pulpit and turned in their military draft cards as an act of resistance. I applauded, from the balcony, with many others.

 

When I was going home from that event, I had one of those moments that we all sometimes enjoy, a moment of clarification or insight. I realized I had applauded people for doing something I could do, but something I wasn’t doing, and without having any compelling reason for not doing it.

 

Here was behavior I appreciated, and that I had no persuasive reason to be avoiding, but yet which I wasn’t engaging in. I decided to transcend that situation in the future. I decided never to applaud as a spectator what I could myself do and had no very good reason for not doing. If I admire some action, I told myself, and if I can do it, and if I have no good reason to not do it, if I have nothing morally better on my agenda – then I should do it. It was a very simple realization. And thereafter I became much more politically active.

 

In organizing on my campus not long thereafter, I remember repeatedly trying to elicit understanding and support for our anti-Vietnam war movement, and repeatedly encountering a strange resistance.

 

I described the motives and suffering of the war, and was asked in response: “And what are you for?” “What goal would make war go away?” “Why do you think fighting against the war makes sense, given that war and all the associated horrors of our existence are inevitable?” I thought the questions were absurd. They annoyed me. They seemed like avoidance, and I answered harshly.

 

We had to end the Vietnam War…I spoke, asserted, even hollered…later there would be time for ending all war forever, for ending all the horrors of our existence. The fact that I and other anti-war organizers didn’t have good answers for how all of society should be restructured to eliminate the causes of war and other pain was no excuse for not opposing the war, I felt.

 

I was technically right about that, of course, but as an activist I now believe I was horribly wrong. Showing that potential supporters’ feelings and doubts aren’t warranted or are illogical was a second best approach. It wasn’t nearly as good as to respond positively, to offer a visionary answer that would address people’s doubts and lead forward, that would provide hope, that would give direction, and that would address them on their own terms.

 

Over thirty years have passed since then. If we were to create a stack of all the speeches and talks and conversations and books and essays about how capitalism hurts people that have been offered in those thirty years – and if we were to create another stack of all the speeches and talks and conversations and books and essays about an alternative to capitalism and how it could benefit people that have been offered in those thirty years…the pile documenting misery would touch the sky, perhaps reach the moon, and the pile describing a superior option would barely leave the ground.

 

The question what do we want still exists. People ask it all the time. And yet even after having given so much attention to what’s wrong, and so little attention to what we want, we still continue to give this fair, urgent, and insightful question minimal attention.

 

I think that is a huge error. I think our collective allocation of energies and insight between these two priorities, addressing what is wrong and its origins, on the one hand, and providing a vision of what we desire and its logic and implications, on the other, needs to be overhauled. We need to do more of the latter.

 

But why does answering the query “What do we want?” matter so much that we should allot much more time and energy to it?

 

Imagine I were to deliver a brilliant, moving, compelling speech about the ravages of old age. I enumerate how old age limits our options, oppresses us…and finally kills us. I document the pain and suffering, accurately, movingly. The facts are uncontestable. The reality is undeniably horrible. After all, aging limits everyone; it kills nearly everyone. I finish this emotional and accurate talk and I say, okay, now join me in a movement against horrible, oppressive murderous old age.

 

Obviously no one joins me…in fact, everyone thinks I am crazy. People rightly realize that to form a movement against the inevitable, against aging is literally insane. And people are aware, as well, that eloquent accurate demonstrations of pain from aging have no bearing on their conclusion to ignore appeals to organize against aging. It is absurd to join a social movement against inevitable facts of life.

 

What we need to realize, certainly in the U.S.A., but I suspect in most places, is that for the tens of millions of people we need to communicate with – the speeches, talks, rallies, classes, and books that we offer about poverty, indignity, war, sexism, and racism, much less about wage slavery, sound precisely like speeches against aging. They sound eloquent, they may induce tears and rage, but as to choosing our life path, they are beside the point.

 

People feel there is no alternative to a world in which these oppressive conditions predominate. They feel that fighting injustices is like fighting aging: it is useless. Even if we make gains they will be quickly wiped out by inevitable pressures reinstituting all the old rot.

 

And so people feel that our piling up descriptions of the pains induced by capitalism, the pains they most often know already from their own experience, is mere whining…and certainly not constructive. The point is, unless people believe that something better is possible, explaining the harm of capitalism, of racism, of sexism, is to their ears like explaining the pain caused by aging: it is an annoying impediment to getting on with life. And they tell us so. Get a life, they say to us in the U.S., for example.

 

Recently a computer broke down in the Z offices, which is where I work, and also where I live. A fellow came to do some repairs, a young white man who owns his own small business. We talked about the bombing of Afghanistan while he worked, and for another couple of hours after.

 

I argued that the motives of the U.S. response were to delegitimate international law, to maintain our credibility as a thug willing to destroy those who defy us, and to create a war on terrorism to justify redistributing wealth upward to the rich, and draconian repressive measures for the poor, below.

 

He had no trouble understanding all this, seeing and feeling the horror of bombing a country with everything short of nuclear weapons even at the possible cost of millions of human souls starved to death. But he said, Michael, you need to understand, me and people like me. We don’t want to hear this. We don’t want you to say this to us. To make us face it over and over.

 

And I said, “Rather like you wouldn’t want me to detail the suffering of an earthquake?” He said, exactly. It is inevitable. There is nothing I or anyone I know can do to change it. I need to protect my family and improve their lives. What you want from me would waste my time. You are right about the facts, but it is only painful to my ears. I can’t affect it. No one can affect it.

 

For this young computer repairperson and millions upon millions like him, like for the students I was trying to reach thirty years ago, only now much more so, a powerful impediment to becoming politically active is doubt that any better outcomes can be attained or maintained.

 

To build really large movements we therefore need vision.

 

We need vision to combat cynicism and doubt

 

We need vision to combat the idea that there is no alternative

 

We need vision to provide hope that sustains commitment, even for ourselves.

 

We need vision that conveys a positive and inspiring approach rather than making us sound like whiners and naysayers to people’s ears.

 

And we need vision to know where we want to go so that our efforts will advance our aspirations rather than leading only in circles, or even worse, leading toward ends we abhor, as has happened often in the past.

 

So, today, after this overly long motivational introduction, I want to talk about a vision, at least for economics, that I personally advocate. This new vision is called… Participatory Economics or Parecon for short. And Parecon is built around Five Central Values, by which I mean, Parecon as an economy is literally conceived and designed to fulfill those values that we hold dear. So what are they?

 

The first value is uncontroversial…

 

 

 

Solidarity

 

Any economy inevitably impacts relations among people. What impact do we want it to have? Surely not to make people anti-social and contrary to one another. Not to cause people to have to ignore or violate each other’s humanity to survive or prosper.

 

The value we hold dear, instead, is solidarity. We want the economy to cause people to be concerned for one another, to look out for one another’s well being, to advance by virtue of collective benefit and not by way of exploiting or ignoring the plight of others.

 

So who would disagree that, other things being equal, an economy that produces more solidarity is better than one that produces less. I don’t think anyone would, and so we have our first value, Solidarity.

 

The second value is also uncontroversial…

 

 

 

Diversity

 

Economies affect the range of options available to us. We value having more options over having fewer options for the choice that more diversity gives us, and because we can benefit vicariously from the experiences of others who make diverse choices, and because diversity insures against our putting all our hopes on single scenarios without other possible avenues being explored and available if we need to change our choice.

 

So who would disagree that other things equal an economy that offers more diversity is better than one that offers less, far better than one that homogenizes outcomes thereby eliminating variety? I don’t think anyone would disagree about that, and certainly not anyone here at the WSF, and so we have our second value, diversity.

 

The third value is more controversial, perhaps even among us…

 

 

 

Equity

 

Economies impact the distribution of income and wealth. What do we want an economy to do in this respect, if we are to deem it worthy? How much should we all get?

 

Various norms are possible. Remuneration could be for property. If you have a deed in your pocket that says you own machines, equipment, land – and productive capital – you get to receive as income the profits those means of production generate. But of course, we all reject that norm for remuneration on the grounds that allowing an owner like Bill Gates to have more wealth than the entire population of Norway is not just immoral, it is vile, it is uncivilized, it is barbaric.

 

Remuneration could instead be for power. You get what you can take – the more power you have, the more you get. But we reject that remunerative norm on grounds that having a society built on the ethics of Genghis Khan, or of the Mafia, or of the Harvard Business School, is likewise immoral and barbaric.

 

Third, remuneration could be for output…and this is more subtle. Indeed, why wouldn’t it be right to reward each participant with the amount that they by their work give to the economy?

 

The answer is because the amount that Sally adds to the economic output of society depends, in part, on many factors that have no relation to Sally’s choices or actions. It depends on how much society values Sally’s product, on how productive her workmates and tools are, on her innate talents and capacities – over which Sally has no control and which she was simply bequeathed.

 

Milton Friedman, the right-wing Noble Economist, once confronted a bunch of leftists about their views. He said, you leftists reject that someone should by virtue of being born to a capitalist parent, be born with a silver spoon, be born with huge advantages, be born rounding third base heading for home, with no catcher there to tag him out – as compared to the working class youth born at bat, against an awesome pitcher, already with two strikes, and wearing a blindfold…

 

But Friedman added, okay, but if we shouldn’t benefit from the luck of being born to rich parents – why should we benefit from the luck of being born with good genes? Why should Mozart be paid more than Salieri? Why should Michael Jordan be paid more than a yeoman ballplayer?

 

Friedman thought he had given a reductio ad absurdum argument against rejecting lucky conditions as a factor for remuneration. I think, instead, that Friedman’s example wasn’t absurd at all, and that the left ought to agree that there should be no remuneration benefits for property inheritance, and also no remuneration benefits for genetic inheritance.

 

Finally, remuneration could be for effort. We reward people for the effort they expend and the hardship they endure at work.

 

Two people go to the fields to cut sugar cane. Suppose they both work the same length of time, with the same conditions, and the same effort. Should they get the same pay? One is much larger. Should we reward the larger person more income because at the end of the day her pile is larger than that of the smaller person?

 

What if one has a better set of tools? Or what if one works in a cane field that is easier to cut or with more cane per area? Do such differences warrant one cutter receiving more income than the other?

 

We want an economy to elicit more productive conditions and activity, to be sure, but to attain that end, we needn’t reward people immorally, giving Billy more than Barbara because of size, or innate talent, or tools, though Billy and Barbara work the same length of time with the same effort and hardship.

 

Two people create mathematics or art, or produce bicycles or jet engines… one is more creative, is quicker, has better tools, or is producing something more valued. But they work at the same rate, in similar conditions, with the same effort. Should one get more pay than the other?

 

Friedman is right, there is no moral reason to remunerate output. And there is also no economic reason – higher pay can’t get an individual to have better genes…nor is it the best way to elicit appropriate application of talents or tools.

 

Rewarding effort provides an appropriate incentive to work hard. It gives us more if we exert more. And the morality is right…we are rewarded for what we endure, what we do, not for luck or circumstance. And so we have a third value, equity.

 

For our fourth value, economies also impact decision making relations. I call the associated value that needs to be propelled by a good economy…

 

 

 

Self-Management

 

The idea is simple. Imagine a worker among many others who wants to put a picture of her family in her workplace unit. Who should make that decision? She should, unilaterally. Suppose she instead wants to put a loud radio in her workstation, blaring forth music. Who should make that decision? Certainly not her alone. Her neighboring workmates should have a say.

 

And just that quickly we have our norm. Economic actors should influence decisions in proportion as the decisions impact them. Sometimes a decision should be unilateral – even dictatorial. It isn’t that the boss should decide dictatorially when I go to the bathroom, as now – but that I should decide that, myself. Other times one person one vote, majority rule makes most sense. Or sometimes consensus makes most sense, or other procedures.

 

The specific methodology is not universal. But the goal we are trying to accomplish with our choice of voting procedures is always self-management – we should impact decisions in proportion as we are affected by them.

 

If we don’t each have proportionate influence, then obviously someone has disproportionately more and someone else has disproportionately less, but there is no moral or pragmatic justification for that. It is morally right that we control our own lives. More, we are each most suited to do so. We are each the world’s foremost expert on our own desires and aspirations. And so we have a fourth value, self-management.

 

Our final value is one that all economists purport to share…

 

 

 

Efficiency

 

But with a clarification.

 

To be efficient is to accomplish some desired goal without wasting resources, energy, effort, or other assets. If the goal is profits and humans aren’t valued, as in capitalism, then efficiency will mean using resources and other assets to generate profits regardless of impact on humans. No matter that workers suffer industrial diseases, are worn to the bone, lack dignity in their labors. No matter that pollution clogs the populace’s eyes and lungs. Profits are maximized, it’s efficient.

 

For us, in contrast, efficiency is achieving democratically sought after production and allocation while furthering the values that we hold dear. It is meeting needs and developing capacities without wasting or abusing things that we value, including, of course, ourselves.

 

So now we have five values – solidarity, diversity, equity, self-management, and efficiency – and our task is to settle on a set of economic institutions that can accomplish production, consumption, and allocation, consistently with advancing those five values. That’s what it means, it seems to me, to try to answer the question what do we want, institutionally, for the economy. We have values…we need institutions consistent with them.

 

 

 

---