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PARECON

LIFE AFTER CAPITALISM

A historically informed and logical economic blueprint with the practicality of a hand-tool, and a vision guided by the...

If not capitalism, what then? asks journalist and activist Albert as he proffers this dogged, humanist alternative to private enterprise.

Let's admit, suggests Albert (a founder of Z Magazine and South End Press), that capitalism has its downside: the zero-sum me-first logic, the downplaying of public good and prioritizing of private good, the decline of diversity as globalization swamps quality with quantity, not to mention antisocial investment, toxic individualism, ecological decay, and absurd income disparities. Albert rejects capitalism, but he also rejects the typical alternatives, such as market socialism and green bioregionalism; instead, he offers, in detail and with examples, participatory economics, or “parecon.” It's an ugly name for a surprisingly elegant economic system owned in equal part by all citizens. Those most affected have the most say in specific decisions. All jobs include “some rote work and some creative work” to eliminate disproportionate power and status. Within limits, pay reflects effort, “the only factor influencing performance over which an individual has any control.” The participatory planning process “utilizes cooperative communication of mutually informed preferences via a variety of simple communicative and organizing principles and means.” Albert’s design is remarkable for its applicability, for weighing social opportunity costs in pursuing a general equilibrium of allocation (“if we produce peanuts, how much of other things will we have to give up?”), and in its admission of imperfection and elements that will need special attention, like its busybody economics and its dictatorship of the sociable. Despite invocation of such romantic figures as Spanish anarchists and French communards, this is still the dismal science, complete with lots of repetition and phrases like “consumption calculated according to the IFB-generated indicative prices and adjusted for MLK's above-average collective consumption request.” But it’s also a science that could possibly generate widespread gratification in everyday economic life.

A historically informed and logical economic blueprint with the practicality of a hand-tool, and a vision guided by the desire to find nobility in work.

Pub Date: April 1, 2003

ISBN: 1-85984-698-X

Page Count: 314

Publisher: Verso

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003

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THE CULTURE MAP

BREAKING THROUGH THE INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES OF GLOBAL BUSINESS

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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