There is a term flooding the progressive press all around the Balkans, lurking like a phantom over the editor's desk. It is present in all "critical analyses" and has become unavoidable in the discourse of the so-called non-government organizations, of ngos.
"Civil society" is the term. It refers to non-governmental elements presumably working on behalf of the social good. It seems that the term has gone beyond civility and become royalty in political journalism in the Balkans.
In the West, too, it is virtually impossible to get away from this term. You encounter it even where you least expect. "Why wouldn't we ally Davos and Porto Alegre?"- asked Philip Watts, Shell President, in a serious tone of voice at the gathering of the World Economic Forum in New York.
The very fact that at last year's Porto Alegre Forum there were three French candidates for president, eight government members with Prime Minister Jospin, 200 mayors of major world cities, speaks of the fact that global resistance to neoliberalism has become a "planetary reality". However, it also warns of probably the greatest challenge so far posed to the subversiveness of the movement itself: in the name of the "civil society".
Here, in the Balkans, the comedy of "listening and repenting", of civil society rhetoric and practice, are at full swing. What is it all about?
The capitalist discourse is changing its bullying approach (denying it out loud), in a metamorphosis which leaves one breathless. The rhetorical fireworks include the phrases "mutual agreement", "transparency", "ethics" and - my favourite - "closeness". In order to have the current system appear in the new velvety outfit, it requires partners - those denying it. Therein begins the comedy of civil society, the noise and the well tempered rage, the new mythology of the "citizen-mate" which in the strategy of he authorities has the aim of simply integrating the deniers.
Such "partnership for social peace", in the Balkans, stands in the service of maintaining the 'social monologue'. Are you criticizing the neoliberal economic model of Serbian Ministers? You will be asked to state your point of view. Are you surprised at the fact of Romania signing of the neocolonial agreement with the USA? The Minister of the Defense will welcome you and listen to you carefully. Are you worried because of the poverty in Croatia? Come to the conference on "reduction of poverty" organized by the Government.
Renewing the system by criticizing it, readiness to co-opt those denying it, paternalism in the guise of participation - all these aspects of social control are as old as the system itself.
According to the writing of the sociologist Luc Boltansky the denial which capitalism was faced with in the seventies, has brought about the creation of a "new spirit of capitalism aimed at appeasing critique by acknowledging its appropriateness, or to simply avoid it by not even responding to it."
Social control by way of civil society offers an interaction of different modes of domination. Authorities can direct fictitious conflicts in which they let the artificial opponents of their own choice specify social difficulties that they then together, through dialogues - do not solve, or even do partly solve -- but at no serious loss for the system.
When the system is in question, of course, the elites oppose the opposition and advocate change only in a limited manner that will not endanger the system. From this stems the leaning of "civil society" towards different variants of reformist thought that tolerates the denial of some of the aspects of the system, but does not tolerate denying the principle of the system's existence. In other words, "civil society" strives to change the rules of the game a bit here and there, but due to its being integrated, keeps participating in the game submissively.
I would like to argue that going beyond civil society and reformist organizing that assumes system maintainence is one thing that needs to happen. The concept of civil society ought to be abandoned for the sake of the vision of another society that does not rest on class, religious, or ethnic discrimination. We need a participatory society committed to authentic "politics from below."
In order to get closer to such a society, it is necessary to "step out of the game", abandon the system, renounce abstract "social-schmertz" and opt for "social conflict", for breaking up with traditional social-political communication and organization. Such a "conflict" would imply getting beyond endless reliance on typical political parties, hierarchical trade unions, bureaucratized non-governmental organizations, and following a path towards new models of association.
It is time, and not only in the Balkans, for a "horizontal social dialogue." Every vertical social dialogue that history has shown us has turned into a monologue in which workers first "stay without a say, and then without a pay."
In contrast we need to seek a horizontal social dialogue conducted among all participants in the social-economic processes - all workers, including those who are going to lose their jobs, unemployed workers who have already lost them, refugees and "displaced persons" who have nothing to lose, Romas who have never had anything, students who cannot afford to go to the university, farmers, social movement activists, women, and many more.
This horizontal dialogue go could immediately encompass the "minimum common plan", a social right that would include: request for minimum income, refutation of privatization as a model, and developing strategies subordinating profits to preserving non- renewable resources and the real environment, but it could also seek longer term goals for a whole new economy. Instead of advoating a productivistic cult of privatization, a horizontal dialogue would likely lead toward advocating participatory economic relations, including a different transition which emphasizes collective initiative and real democracy, and which, in its calculations, takes into account the price of the suffering and dignity and everything else more precious than profits.

Why participatory economics?
I think that for the Balkans it is the perfect time for social movements to try to re-invent - even beyond democracy -- self management, or participatory management. The 'Yugoslav experience' shouldnt be a discouragement here. In Yugoslavia there was no private ownership of productive assets, true, but there was a market system which dramatically limited economic options and a corporate division of labor that put a ruling coordinator class above workers in power and income.
So, in actual reality-- in so-called socialist Yugoslavia -- there was no real selfmanagement, but only a rhetorical reference to it. There was a phenomenon that Djilas had called a 'New Class' in the polity, which is true enough for the state, but to get beyond Djilas who was identifying only to a political bureacuracy, we need to see that we also had a ruling coordinator class arising from our economys structure. There cannot be participatory management in a situation where the economy uses markets and corporate divisions of labor, whatever the state may look like, bureaucratic or not.

The prospect for that kind of model, the one I call participatory economics, in today's Balkans is great. An anti-authoritarian, left liberterian economic system that accomplishes economic activity to meet needs and fulfill potentials while propelling solidarity, diversity, equity, and participatory management, with positive implications as well for other parts of life and society's key domains such as polity and kinship and culture, gives us a promise of a true classlessness and a powerfull alternative both to the neoliberal models now favored in the Balkans, and to the authoritarian systems or coordinator economies that previously existed in Eastern Europe.

But, still, what is exactly participatory economics?
Let us start with worker and consumer councils. Remuneration for effort and sacrifice. Balanced job complexes. Participatory management. And participatory planning. And they are all the features of an economic vision called participatory economics, or parecon for short.
Parecon is a full, carefully reasoned, international proposal for a better economy, as part of a better world.
Parecon has institutions that produce equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management, while of course producing products to meet needs and fulfill potentials.
Parecon is an alternative to capitalism. It is also an alternative to what has gone under the label socialism but has really elevated a planner/manager/intellectual class to dominance.
We also don't want an economy like in the old Soviet Union or Yugoslavia - with their regimented state ownership, central planning, markets, corporate workplaces, decision and surplus mopolizing elites, and subordination for working people. And parecon embodies the grass roots aspirations of all countries' progressive and radical workers' movements. So what about parecon, as an economic program for the Global Movement?

1. First innovation:
Balanced job complexes
In a parecon, in each workplace each worker still has a job composed of many tasks, of course. But instead of some workers having all the empowering and more pleasant and fulfilling tasks and other workers having only rote, tedious, and disempowering tasks -- each worker in a parecon has a balanced mix. Each worker's day on the job in a parecon has a comparable quality of life effect and empowerment effect on them as any other worker's day on the job. The parecon division of labor, what we call balanced job complexes, instead of producing class division and class rule, produces equity, solidarity, and the preconditions for participatory management.
We don't have managers and assembly line workers. We don't have surgeons, nurses, and custodians. We don't have financial officers and stock boys. A parecon has to get all the worthy tasks that need doing done, of course, but in a parecon we divide them up so that each person has a mix of responsibilities and tasks that, on average, is like that of others regarding quality of life and empowerment effects. If you do something that is highly empowering, part of the time - then part of the time you will be doing other things that are quite rote and tedious, and vice versa, in a fair mix.
We no longer have a society in which 80% of the population is taught, in school, to endure boredom and to take orders, having their greater potentials squandered so that they might fit in a subordinate class position. In a parecon, instead, everyone learns and develops both in school and at work the capacity to participate, as well as to do dignified work of diverse types.

2. Second innovation: renumeration for effort
In a parecon, in each workplace each worker is remunerated for the effort they expend. You don't get more pay because you have better tools, or because you are bigger, or because you own some property, or because you happen to be producing something very highly valued. You get a higher income only if you work longer or harder, or if you work at worse conditions (though in a parecon this last possibility doesn't apply when everyone's overall job is balanced for quality of life impact).

3. Third innovation : participatory planing, instead of markets
In a parecon, workplaces and consumers connected to one another not by competitive markets or central planning, but by a system of cooperative negotiation of economic choices called participatory planning. The participatory planning procedures arrive at accurate valuations of the full social costs and benefits of the production and consumption of all goods.
They take account of collective and individual effects on workers and on consumers, on the ecology, and on social relations. They arrive at choices with each actor having proportionate say.

4. Strategy: how do we get there?
Indeed, winning a parecon revolves centrally on creating and trying to strengthen workers and consumers' councils, the former in workplaces, the latter in communities. It depends on having those
institutions begin to address economic decisions, for units and for the whole economy. Consumers councils struggling to redesign neighbors, to gain control over rent and housing, to share incomes and organize purchases of collective goods, to win control over local, regional, and national government spending, to define the pace of work and allocation of tasks in workplaces, to challenge and alter payment scales, product definitions, and investment choices, all in the context of arguing for a whole new economy, as the ultimate goal.
Pareconist strategy will emphasize winning sequences of reforms that move us toward pareconist institutions and consciousness -- such as winning redistributive taxes, changes in work relations and
especially the division of labor, more participation in budgeting and workplace decision making, more access to information, and control over collective consumption, and so on, all in ways that build workplace and consumer councils and that arouse and empower ever wider circles of committed activists. The gains will be sought in ways that expand rather than delimit desires and that build activist organizations, allegiance, and empowerment, all headed toward new defining institutions.
A pareconist viewpoint will not dismiss people's short run struggles for any remuneration be for effort and sacrifice, only. Having movement divisions of labor based on the balanced job complex goal. And practicing self managing decision making. Of course, these changes would turn a great many self proclaimed leftist organizations upside down with innovation.
The outward facing front would involve making demands and fighting for them in ways that raise pareconish values and analysis and develop pareconish aspirations.

* Historian and activist researcher from the Balkans.