The work of Michael Albert’s on participatory economics that is the subject of this Parecomic book goes back many years, and is rooted in decades of experience in highly successful activism and organizing, and intensive discussion and thought.
I met Mike when he was an undergraduate at MIT in the 1960s, a time of great ferment and much complexity—the “time of troubles” in much mainstream commentary, which had an unmistakeable civilizing impact on the society. When Mike arrived in the fall of 1965, the general atmosphere here in Boston was quite hostile to the growing—though still small—antiwar movement. Prevailing attitudes were well illustrated shortly after Mike arrived. In October 1965, the first International Day of Protest was called against the war in Vietnam. We tried to organize the first large-scale demonstration against the war on the Boston Common, the traditional site for those activities. It was broken up violently. The speakers (I was supposed to be one) could hardly say a word. On the radio and in the next day’s Boston Globe, perhaps the most liberal daily in the country, the demonstration was bitterly denounced. The demonstrations were harshly condemned as well by congressional liberals, and quite generally. That persisted for some time. The second International Day of Protest was in March 1966. We tried to have the demonstration in a downtown church—which was also attacked. Those were the general circumstances when Mike arrived at MIT.
MIT undergraduate life was relatively insulated from the turmoil beyond. That persisted—on the surface at least—for several years. In 1968, after the January Tet Offensive, the government launched a campaign to “make peace” with student protestors, by then a vast wave. The effort began with visits to campuses by McGeorge Bundy, Dean at Harvard before he became National Security Adviser in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The tour began with what were considered safe, quiet schools. MIT was second in line—and the tour stopped there, with angry student protests over the atrocious Vietnam war. The change during these years was very largely the result of effective education and organizing among the undergraduate student body by Mike and a few of his classmates. In fact, in that year Mike was elected president of the undergraduate body on a program so radical it is hard to imagine, I’m sure without comparison in the country.
Mike went on to further achievements, including the founding of Z magazine, which quickly became, and remains, a leading journal of progressive thought and analysis of contemporary affairs, and South End Press, a cooperative participatory publishing enterprise with similar commitments over a broad range. To declare an interest, these developments were personally of great importance, since in those years publication outlets for dissident work were quite limited and those were about the only places I could publish.
Mike then went on to establish Znet, a flourishing network for activism, analysis, commentary and information. More recently, Mike has been the leading figure in initiating and organizing, the International Organization for a Participatory Society (IOPS), dedicated to self management, equity and justice, solidarity, diversity, ecological stewardship, and internationalism. These “core values” are spelled out in terms of the participatory economics and politics (Parecon/Parpolitics) that Mike and his associates, many linked to Znet and actively participating in it, have been carefully exploring and developing for some years.
The activist successes and organizational structures they have created are themselves a most impressive accomplishment. At the same time Mike and his collaborators have published a series of important books ranging from critical analysis of leftist theory and practice over a broad range to important contributions to welfare economics, meanwhile developing in thoughtful detail the economic and social vision based on the ideas of participatory economics that have been taking shape through these years of education, organization, and intensive interaction with a very lively community of fellow activists and researchers. Extensive discussion and detailed exposition is now available in print and in internet contributions, and is vividly offered here in the highly accessible form of a graphic novel. It is necessarily work in progress, to be informed by practice, experimentation, and ongoing critical discussion and debate, and should be a vital stimulus for the activist engagement that contemporary society desperately needs if urgent problems are to be confronted seriously and constructively.
—Noam Chomsky