First off I want to apologize to my fellow Green Social Thought editorial board members for any misunderstandings caused by my use of the editorial ‘we’ in my previous article Why We Don’t Support Parecon. Since my name was the only one listed as author I did not stop to think that my poor choice of words would lead readers to think that I was speaking for the entire editorial board. I sincerely beg your pardon for this. The criticisms expressed in that article are mine alone.

“Populism” is a magical word. Its mysterious power unites the Erdogan and Putin governments, Latin American leftists like Evo Morales and the late Hugo Chavez, the resurgent Right in Europe and the United States, Hungarian and Polish anti-communist parties, Podemos, the Eurocommunism of the tragic Syriza, the revitalizers of social democracy Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn – all under the same umbrella.

The basic problem we have with parecon as advocated by Michael Albert is that we think he proposes blueprints for society without attempting to provide anything empirical to back up his claims. Whenever a criticism is raised, Albert’s response is to assert the beauty and elegance of his model, or to claim he has already considered this or that objection, so why are we being so critical? Of course, since the model is not functioning in the actual world, there is no evidence to falsify it, and Albert can always double down on its elegance in his ideal mindscape.