Participatory Economic Program
By Michael Albert

Participatory economics is a set of institutions for accomplishing
production, consumption, and allocation while meeting people’s needs and
furthering their development; is a set of institutions designed to propel
equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management; is a set of institutions
centered upon democratic councils, remuneration according to effort and
sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning; is a set of
institutions that answers the question: if not capitalism, what do you want?

Participatory economic program is a set of demands meant to win improvements
in people’s lives in the short run while laying the basis for more gains and
the eventual winning of a participatory economy in the long run. It includes
demands for…

·	…just rewards -- including profit, wealth, inheritance, luxury, and income
taxes, affirmative action, full employment, minimum wage supports, social
wage supports, reverse income taxes, higher wages, and also just rewards
inside our movements.
·	…self-management -- including workers’ and consumers’ councils,
democratized information access, democratized workplace decision-making,
consumer power over production norms, democratized budgets, and also
self-management inside our own movements.
·	…dignified work -- including upgrading degrading jobs, regulating overly
empowering jobs, creating balanced jobs, empowering all workers, and also
dignifying and balancing work in our own movements.
·	…participatory planning -- including council infrastructure and democratic
knowledge disbursement, social regulation of prices, expansion of
qualitative descriptive information, enlargement of solidarity, placing
human needs above profitability, democratizing budgets, winning more leisure
and less labor, and also participatory allocation inside our movements.
·	…democratized and just international relations (which are the subject of
many other ZNet Commentaries) including abolishing the World Bank, IMF, and
WTO and instituting in their place democratic agencies subordinate to the
will of local populations and seeking to regulate world trade and exchange
to the benefit of the worst off participants.

All the above has been discussed in this series of parecon commentaries and
now one final step concludes the series.

Suppose we adopt a participatory program encompassing all the above. What do
we then highlight as our central demand? What feature becomes the lynchpin
of our efforts, the element that produces public visibility and widespread
support? What is our version of “abolish slavery,” “get the vote,” “end the
war,” “free my people”? What current demand within the broad program can
best:

(a)	address needs that people currently feel
(b)	propel parecon consciousness-raising
(c)	empower people to seek still more, and
(d)	and galvanize people to win sought gains and simultaneously advance the
encompassing broader program it is part of?

I am going to hazard a guess…very loosely and broadly, and obviously not
refined.

·	We demand one quarter less work time for everyone, plus a parallel one
quarter drop in wage and bonus income for the top quarter income earners in
society (including an additional quarter profit tax on their income from
capital), no change in total wage income for the middle half of society, and
a one quarter raise in total wage income for the bottom quarter of society.
·	We demand overtime must be paid at twice the rate of normal time and firms
cannot hire or maintain overtime workers while there are applicants for
normal time labor.
·	We provide that anyone who wishes to work beyond three quarters of their
current load can do so, but only in special employment programs initiated
and paid by the government, administered locally by workers and consumers,
and directed at improving local health care, education, social services,
public housing, or other basic functions in poor communities where pay for
this “surplus” work would be at twice the minimum wage (and the minimum
wage, by the above requirements, would be two-thirds above what it was
before this demand is won, until other pressures raise it still further).
·	We demand the government invest in social programs including: training the
unemployed to fill newly open work positions, training folks in previously
unemployed or unskilled jobs to take up higher skilled work left unattended
by the reduction in workload of the currently well employed, oversight of
the whole system in each workplace by unions and worker’s councils, the
research and activism to pare away currently socially useless labor in
advertising and similar worthless pursuits, and service work for those
wanting to add their energies to advancing health care, education, social
services, public housing, etc.

The work reduction and income altering scenario releases – I think -- more
income than it hands out, assuming any resultant lost output is confined to
useless and pointless products. But does the freed income (equal to one
quarter of the current wages, bonuses, and profits of the top quarter income
earners in society) fall short of the costs of the job program plus the
costs of training? Perhaps, and if so, we then demand that the government
reduce defense spending and spending on the prison industrial complex – and
thereby free appropriate people to work in the real economy making up for
lost hours and funds needed to handle program expenses.

What would all this do?

Well, by reducing everyone’s work time commitments by 25% it would greatly
empower the public to have time to develop agendas of change and to fight
for them. People can do this with there new found time either through the
social programs by which they can also get additional income, or via
volunteer movement activism.

The demands also dramatically redistribute income.

·	Even before derivative impact on bargaining power changes wages further,
the top quarter earns wages at the same rate as before, though losing a
quarter of their profit income and of course a quarter of their wages and
bonuses due to reduced labor time. Yet even this group can be addressed
about the benefits of the program not only in moral terms regarding the well
being of others, but also because through the changes they will get more
free time and will also enjoy many of the social benefits such as reduced
hostility in society, increased public goods, and so on,

·	The next half of the population has a one-third hourly pay rate increase
so that they earn the same amount as before but for three quarters the time
spent at work. They therefore benefit from reduced work time, an increased
hourly pay rate, from the social spending, and also from the changed balance
of power between society’s classes due to new found security, etc.

·	The bottom quarter of the population also spends three quarters the time
spent before at work (though the unemployed of course increase their time at
work), but now they get a quarter more total pay then before before, which
is a two thirds hourly pay increase. They also benefit most from the new
social spending and changes in balance of power among society’s classes.

Obviously the program directly immediately improves the condition of society
’s worst off, but, more, it diminishes and perhaps even eliminates
unemployment thereby securing the weak against job threats by the strong,
further empowering workers to take a still larger share of output as they
solidify their new strength. The redirection of much labor to social
programs also not only benefits the poorest constituencies in society
directly, due to new schools, housing, etc, it also greatly empowers them,
in turn leading to new demands for better wages and conditions and other
social improvements. Likewise, efforts to replace highly skilled labor
allotments reduced by a quarter for such jobs, uplifts other workers,
eliminating barriers to entry to better tasks at work.

The supremely strategic aspect of the program is, I think, that at its heart
is a core demand to work less hours, something that people at every level of
our society think is warranted and desirable and which no one will be able
to argue powerfully against. The rest of the program flows logically from
the desire to reduce hours in ways most benefiting the worst off while
improving the overall quality of society, rather than enriching only the
powerful and already privileged. In addition the program opens doors to
issues of remuneration, power, job definition and allocation, and budgeting
and broad valuations. The program, in other words, wins terrain that leaves
folks not only immediately better off, but also more empowered and ready to
struggle on.

When thinking about what might be a lynchpin of an economic campaign that
would galvanize broad and deep support, I gravitated to demands about length
of work time and associated income because my experiences suggest that time
pressure is greatly felt, greatly despised, and a great barrier to
radicalization…and therefore a great target for a massive campaign. The
whole project just embellishes demanding thirty hours work for forty hours
pay, and, I admit, even that simple demand, all by itself, even without
diverse caveats and improvements, would be a wonderful centerpiece for a
parecon movement. Embellished more or less as above, however, seeking a
quarter less work time looks to me like a wonderful lightening rod,
lynchpin, and foundation for struggle.