I have found very little information about political systems to pair with Parecon. I’ve read about Participatory Polity and am interested in Liquid democracy but I still am confused about how they would work in tandem. How would things like the military be structured? What authority would a political body have over the economy? What about a judicial system?
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Hi Sam, have you watched this video presentation by Shalom on nested councils?
I see there being a need for a written political constitution for the society, which would clarify the rules, bodies and decision-making processes. Robin writes more about the role of political bodies in his book Democratic Economic Planning, as well things like longer run environmental planning. I agree with you though, it would be nice to see some work that puts it all together.
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Will check this out. I think there are lots of great ideas out there I’ve just never seen anyone present a unified political and economic plan that is clear and consistent.
Agreed. I’d also like to see someone combine the models into a unified proposal.
There is also this article that may be helpful where Shalom gets pretty detailed about polity vision: https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/parpolity-political-vision-for-a-good-society-by-stephen1-shalom/
In addition, I think in the video you shared Jason, Shalom mentions that the consumer councils in the economic system could also be the nested councils of the political system. Though this might mean that the consumer councils have to go down to a smaller level than is specified by Albert and Hahnel. I think the lowest level for them is like a neighborhood council with maybe 1,000 people, whereas Shalom’s councils all have a small enough amount of people to be able to participate meaningfully in political decisions (a much broader scope than just economy). I think he usually estimates this to be between 25-50 people. So, the consumers councils would have to go down to a level more like blocks for there to be a one-to-one match between consumer councils and nested councils.
But even though Shalom says the consumer councils and political councils could be the same to some degree, he doesn’t say it needs to be a one-to-one match. Maybe if you get to higher levels you would want to separate them out more. For example, it would probably be a lot of work put on the national nested council for them to have to handle economic consumption decisions in addition to general political decisions. But at lower levels it makes more sense to have them combined. I mean, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to me to have everyone in a nested political council and then also be in a separate council for their consumption.