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Are there classes in a Participatory Economy?
The goal of a participatory economy is to eliminate class division by removing economic differences that empower some actors and weaken others, that enrich some and impoverish others, or that pit some systematically against any others. The class-related innovations of a participatory economy are:
- There is no private ownership of means of production. All actors have the same ownership relations to economic assets as all others.
- There is no longer corporate organisational structure. In its place balanced jobs eliminate systematic differentiations bearing on power or income due to a division of labour. And these are fostered and nurtured by the allocation mechanisms, rather than subverted and replaced by hierarchies of command.
- And finally, participatory economics establishes compensation for effort and sacrifice. While some people may exert more in their labours and others less, so that people have different incomes, there is no competition for income, no exploitation of some people by others, and there is a limit, in any case, on how much more effort anyone could possibly exert and therefore earn.
In a participatory economy there is no class of owners that occupies a level above others—no capitalists. There is no commanding managerial class above others —no coordinators. There is no obedient class beneath others—no working class. This is because there is no privately held capital, no monopolisation of empowering circumstances, and no group that occupies a position subordinate to others in the economy. In a participatory economy, there are only people who contribute to economic output and who by virtue of doing so have a just claim on it (or who physically cannot participate but have that claim by virtue of being human), who all have the same ownership condition in the economy, who all toil at balanced jobs and who all therefore are economic producers and consumers, without class differentiations.