This is a reply to the workerscontrol.net article "Spectrum, Trajectory and the Role of the State in Workers’ Self-Management", especially on its treatment of the parecon model.
Some currents argue that the experience of small-scale self-management under capitalism is useful preparation. However, self-management is impossible without real socialist democracy.
This controversy illustrates the difference between the defeated world of ideology and the vibrant and outward-looking world of action that strives to disengage from the dominant relations.
The two theorists, following different trajectories, reached a common conclusion: that the real content of socialism is the complete control of labour by the workers themselves.
Workers’ self-management is associated with times of social transformation. The state may chose to either restrict self-management or facilitate it so the conflict is institutionalised and contained.