Gar Alperovitz and Michael Albert have been at the forefront of efforts to design and build an economy beyond capitalism for decades - efforts that have become even more relevant in our age of economic and ecological crises. Albert’sParticipatory Economics (Parecon), developed in collaboration with Robin Hahnel, outlines a comprehensive vision of an ethical economic system, in which bottom-up democratic decision making takes the place of market-driven competition. Gar Alperovitz’s Pluralist Commonwealth model extrapolates from existing experiments in the democratization of wealth to build a systemic and multilayered answer to the urgent systemic challenges we are facing as a society. While both share a fundamental commitment to real democracy and true economic justice, the differences between Alperovitz and Albert’s respective models help illuminate what’s really at stake in system change. They recently sat down to better understand where their trajectories intersect or diverge; below is a transcript of the highlights of their conversation:
Gar Alperovitz and Michael Albert: A Conversation on Economic Visions.
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