I've read most of Chomsky's work, and I've never detected a note of whingeing in any of it. His work, among other things, is aimed at exposing political and social injustice - not to offer solutions. Isn't that enough?

You may not agree with everything he says, but give him his due - he has been one the world's most influential dissidents of the last 40 plus years. He has contributed massively to exposing the evils of capitalist tyranny and informing the anti-capitalist movement.

You can't come up with solutions until you fully understand the problems, right?

Just to clarify, parecon is short for participatory economics, an economic system devised by libertarian socialists/anarchists Michael Albert and Robert Hahnel.It proposes a way of sorting out how stuff gets made and distributed without the state or the market.

The underlying values that parecon seeks to implement are equity, solidarity, diversity, and participatory self management.

The main institutional vehicles to attain these ends are council democracy, balanced job complexes, remuneration according to effort and sacrifice, and participatory planning.

It's a bit complicated to explain briefly, so check the website (a subsite of the excellent Z Net), there are several introductory articels, such as 'Socialism aas it was always meant to be'. For those of you with degrees in economics there are some very complicated books on it too (as well as easy ones for people like me).

www.parecon.org