PROUT and PAM

This blog entry is on PROUT and PAM.

PROUT stands for ‘Progressive Utilization Theory’ and PAM stands for ‘Progressive Australia Movement’. Key principles of PROUT inform PAM, but not exclusively: complimentary and more extensive reconciled political ideology is apparent and provided.

PROUT, synthesised by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar[1], envisages a transition from capitalism to an alternate economic model, constituting a tripartite structure:

1. Big business transitions from the hierarchical corporate division of labour to a market socialist design, where workers have co-ownership of the means of production;
2. Small business remains intact mirroring the current petit-bourgeois[2] distinction between business owners and workers, and where some are sole-traders de-facto paying themselves a wage through profits gleaned; and
3. Public ownership for appropriate sectors such as utilities.

PROUT seems to not only provide an alternative to capitalism and communism, but also striking a balance between anarchism, capitalism, and communism. The anarchism component is refracted by more autonomous democratic worker cooperatives for large businesses that are decentralised in terms of decision-making factoring in cost to make profit¹, as antidote to excessively top-down central planning of the economy in ‘communist’ regimes, eschewing overbearing state control, as well as without a hierarchy in the workplace in these big businesses; capitalism through utilizing markets in the private sector(s); and communism seeing resources – as a commons – where they “would be collective property from which usufructuary[3] rights are carved out for use by individuals or groups of individuals”[4].

PAM has many more progressive features: for more information, and/or to get involved, please see the following progressive websites:

Progressive Australia Movement (‘PAM’): https://www.progressiveaustralia.org.au

To get in contact with the movement convenor, for queries and/or if you would like to participate, join or contribute to PAM, please visit: https://progressiveaustralia.org.au/contact and fill out the online form therein.

For social media digital participation, engagement and further political material and synthesis visit PAM’s presence on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/778801853322899/

Advocated by PROUT – small business, and big business market socialist elements (of benefit for economies of scale in wealth accumulation and creation), and a healthy public sector – would be good and instructive as progressive stepping stones?, as political targets?, with room for further refinements/adjustments moving forward?

These above questions as a segue, how does PROUT and PAM align personally with my own politics?

Regarding PAM, alignment with my ‘no end of history’ progressive politics, are as follows, non-exhaustively:

• Treaty between the state and Indigenous Peoples;
• Environmental Protection;
• No Foreign Ownership;
• Contractual Election Promises;
• Income Ceiling;
• Republicanism for Australia;
• An Explicit Bill of Rights;
• Free Education (including tertiary);
• Full-Employment Guarantee (but minus graduated disability, of course);
• Rebuilding Domestic Manufacturing; and
• Principle of Localisation of Production.

Thanks for reading!

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[1] ‘Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, last accessed 3 November, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabhat_Ranjan_Sarkar

[2] The term ‘petit bourgeois’ here is used to designate small business, not just sole traders in the strict Marxist sense. For a Marxist definition of this term, see ‘Marx on Social Class’ by University of Regina, https://uregina.ca/~gingrich/250j3103.htm#:~:text=Petty%20Bourgeoisie%20and%20Middle%20Class,134).

[3] ‘Usufruct’, last accessed 3 November 2024, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct

[4] ‘Progressive utilization theory’, last accessed 3 November 2024, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_utilization_theory

1. This kind of decentralising of decision-making through factoring in costs in business to make profit, in self-interested strategic allocations of resources at hand, as an economic, social and political mechanism – characteristic of markets – applies in small business too, not just big business, as is within the foreseen PROUT model. ↩︎