parecon - book - 2008 - Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century

Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century
Chris Spannos (ed)
AK Press
2008
416 pages

Real Utopia is a collection of texts, edited by Z Communications contributor/editor Chris Spannos, that focuses on practical applications of activist Michael Albert’s and economist Robin Hahnel’s parecon theory which they first outlined in a book titled Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty-First Century.  Parecon, an abbreviated term for ‘participatory economics’, is a theory for an economic system, devised by leftist radicals, that proposes a more horizontal and equitable structure for wealth distribution than the dominant capitalist system.  Parecon theory requires - or would likely result in - changes to the structure of the society that implemented it.  Such changes would include greater egalitarianism at the workplace (and workers given managerial duties), greater equality within families, social ownership of property, an end to racism, and numerous other progressions towards the development of a participatory society.

Spannos’ book features numerous contributions by writers and interviewees who have either thought deeply about, or have practical experience in attempting to implement, a society that allows its citizens greater participation in its forms.  The book contains six sections divided according to a different aspect or stage in the development of a parecon society, and each section contains a mix of interviews and written pieces that look towards that goal.  The interviewees include Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, parecon’s chief theorists, and also Noam Chomsky.  Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Dancing in the Street, Nickel and Dimed, and a number of other books, engaged Michael Albert in a conversation about parecon as a post-capitalist and post-Marxist economic model.

Many of the pieces are calls by the authors for the adoption of parecon-esque ideas by individuals who operate in various social fields or at particular global areas.  The arts, Africa, Eastern Europe, and sexual relationships are all objects to which the subject of parecon organization may be applied.  Other pieces describe businesses which attempt to put the parecon theories into praxis, including discussions of South End Press/Z Communications, the Vancouver Parecon Collective, and Winnipeg Manitoba's Mondragon Bookstore.  The book is varied in its content and is likely a good companion to Albert and Hahnel’s original texts.