Michael Albert | |
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Born | New York City, New York, United States | April 8, 1947
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Occupations |
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Website | Michael Albert at ZNetwork |
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Libertarian socialism |
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Michael Albert (born April 8, 1947) is an American economist, speaker, writer, and political critic. Since the late 1970s, he has published books, articles, and other contributions on a wide array of subjects. He has also set up his own media outfits, magazines, and podcasts. He is known for helping to develop the socioeconomic theory of participatory economics. [1]
Albert was born in New York City and grew up in New Rochelle, New York. [2] In 1965, Albert was studying physics at MIT. He objected to the US military's funding of the university. This, along with the civil rights movement, led Albert to become politically active. [3] : 39 [4] He became a member of Students for a Democratic Society and opposed the Vietnam War. He was expelled from MIT, in January 1970, for disruptive behaviour, [4] [5] although he claimed the charges were 'cooked-up'. [6]
Albert founded South End Press in 1977 [4] along with Lydia Sargent and Juliet Schor, [7] among others.
In 1987, Albert founded Zeta Magazine with Sargent. [8] The magazine focused on libertarian and anarchist socialist thought. [9] It was renamed Z Magazine in 1989. [10]
In 1990–91, Albert and Robin Hahnel worked on outlining their ideas around participatory economics. They published Looking Forward and The Political Economy of Participatory Economics, with the later including an economic model of the system. [11] [12] Doug Brown, writing in the Journal of Economic Issues said their alternative to markets was novel, but mainly of academic interest. [11]
By 1995, the organisation Z Magazine had branched out providing online content and media training. Along with the magazine the ventures are collectively known as Z Communications . [13]
In 2003, Parecon: Life After Capitalism was published further outlining participatory economics in a more accessible, less academic format. [14] The book was translated into 20 languages. [15] Reviewing the book Paul Ormerod felt Albert's criticisms of capitalism were unfounded. [16] Albert spoke at the World Social Forum in the same year. [17] He spoke at European Social Forum in 2004. [18]
Albert was a founding member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society, in 2012. [19] [13]
Sean Michael Wilson created a comic book based on Albert and his ideas in 2013. [20] [21]
Albert identifies himself as a market abolitionist and believes markets should be replaced with participatory economics. [22] [23] [24] : 222 [25] : 284
In 2006, David Schweickart wrote a detailed critique of participatory economics called Nonsense on Stilts: Michael Albert's Parecon. He claimed three fundamental features of the economic system are flawed. [26]
Libertarian socialism is an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist political current that emphasises self-governance and workers' self-management. It is contrasted from other forms of socialism by its rejection of state ownership and from other forms of libertarianism by its rejection of private property. Broadly defined, it includes schools of both anarchism and Marxism, as well as other tendencies that oppose the state and capitalism.
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as socialism or communism.
In the capitalist mode of production, wage slavery refers to the exploitation of labor by keeping wages low or stagnant in order for a business to maximize its surplus value. Wage slavery can be loosely defined as a person's dependence on wages for their livelihood, especially when wages are low, treatment and conditions are poor, and there are few chances of upward mobility.
Participatory economics, often abbreviated Parecon, is an economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for allocation in society. In the system, the say in decision-making is proportional to the impact on a person or group of people. Participatory economics is a form of socialist decentralized planned economy involving the collective ownership of the means of production. It is a proposed alternative to contemporary capitalism and centralized planning. This economic model is primarily associated with political theorist Michael Albert and economist Robin Hahnel, who describes participatory economics as an anarchist economic vision.
ZNetwork, formerly known as Z Communications, is a left-wing activist-oriented media group founded in 1986 by Michael Albert and Lydia Sargent. It is, in broad terms, ideologically libertarian socialist, anti-capitalist, and heavily influenced by participatory economics, although much of its content is focused on critical commentary of foreign affairs. Its publications include Z Magazine, ZNet, and Z Video. Since early November 2022, they have all been regrouped under the name ZNetwork.
South End Press was a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, Juliet Schor, among others, in Boston's South End. It published books written by political activists, notably Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, bell hooks, Winona LaDuke, Manning Marable, Ward Churchill, Cherríe Moraga, Andrea Smith, Howard Zinn, Jeremy Brecher and Scott Tucker. South End Press closed in 2014.
Robin Eric Hahnel is an American economist and professor emeritus of economics at American University. He was a professor at American University for many years and traveled extensively advising on economic matters all over the world. He is best known for his work on participatory economics with Z Magazine editor Michael Albert.
G7 Welcoming Committee Records was a Canadian independent record label based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The label mostly released material by artists and speakers with a radical left-wing point of view.
Anarchist economics is the set of theories and practices of economic activity within the political philosophy of anarchism. Many anarchists are anti-authoritarian anti-capitalists, with anarchism usually referred to as a form of libertarian socialism, i.e. a stateless system of socialism. Anarchists support personal property and oppose capital concentration, interest, monopoly, private ownership of productive property such as the means of production, profit, rent, usury and wage slavery which are viewed as inherent to capitalism.
Post-capitalism is, in part, a hypothetical state in which the economic systems of the world can no longer be described as forms of capitalism. Various individuals and political ideologies have speculated on what would define such a world. According to classical Marxist and social evolutionary theories, post-capitalist societies may come about as a result of spontaneous evolution as capitalism becomes obsolete. Others propose models to intentionally replace capitalism, most notably socialism, communism, anarchism, nationalism and degrowth.
Pat Devine is a radical socialist economist concerned mainly with industrial economics and comparative economic systems.
Noam Chomsky is an intellectual, political activist, and critic of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. Noam Chomsky describes himself as an anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist, and is considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left wing of politics of the United States.
Leslie Cagan is an American activist, writer, and socialist organizer involved with the peace and social justice movements. She is the former national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the former co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and the former chair of Pacifica Radio.
The Mondragon Bookstore & Coffeehouse was a political bookstore and vegan cafe located in The Old Market Autonomous Zone at 91 Albert Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The name comes from the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation and other organisations in the Basque town of Mondragón Spain that is known for its extensive network of worker's cooperatives.
Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor is a classical political-economic argument asserting that, in advanced capitalist societies, state policies assure that more resources flow to the rich than to the poor, for example in the form of transfer payments.
Thomas Ferguson is an American political scientist and author who writes on politics and economics, often within a historical perspective. He is best known for his Investment Theory of Party Competition, described in detail in his 1995 book Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-driven Political Systems.
This is a list of writings published by the American author Noam Chomsky.
A facilitation board is a proposed economic institution conceived by economists Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel which act in systems of economic democracy as agencies that facilitate information exchange and processing for collective consumption proposals and for large-scale investment projects, workers requests for changing places of employment, and individuals and families seeking to find membership in living units and neighborhoods, among other functions.
Occupy is a short study of the Occupy movement written by the American academic and political activist Noam Chomsky. Initially published in the United States by the Zuccotti Park Press as the first title in their Occupied Media Pamphlet Series in 2012, it was subsequently republished in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books later that year.