BUILDING A UNIVERSE THAT DOESN’T FALL APART TWO DAYS LATER
Dec 29th, 2012 by Conor McCabe
Trying to fish for an analogy to help describe the process of discussing counter-capitalist theories and templates without signing up to them. Really struck by recent conversations with Rónán Burtenshaw and Miles Link and the flagging of works by Seth Ackerman and David Schweickart - both writers new to me - and also the idea that talking about counter-capitalist worlds and transitions to these worlds is not the same as signing up dogmatically to ten-point plans of tactics and strategy. That discussing the works of people like Ackerman and Schweickart is not about ossifying the analysis, it’s about where you take it. It’s not about signing up on a dotted line. I mean, you don’t have to agree with the Sound of Music to enjoy where this ends up.
I was looking at the discussion on Crooked Timber of Seth Ackerman’s latest essay in Jacobin, and one feature that struck me was that many of the leads from his essay bring me to disucssions of the issues that are not by economists — or lawyers, who will need to write the new rules. (Philosophers pop us a fair bit.) The economists I have found seem to deal with historical analysis. (Of course, that is in the early stages of seeing where those leads take me.)
Some years ago, when I began to try to research this area (approaching it from the question of economic inequality) I did encounter one economist — John Roemer — who has written in this area, but whose recent thoughts (in a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Economic Inequality) explicitly excluded consideration of changing the economic system because he feels it is not feasible project for the foreseeable future.
While alternatives to the current capitalist systems are not mainstream economics, given the interest among economists in inequality, it is surprising that there seems to be so little — if any — contemporary research on alternatives and inequality.
Tomboktu, the Heterodox Economics Newsletter might provide some leads:
http://heterodoxnews.com/HEN/home.html