Do we need a planned economy?

[LeftScot]

I am curious to see how many leftists out there would activley support the idea of a planned economy and its many benefits.

Clearly, with the market-capitalist system, there is a grave danger to humanity....global warming, there is great economic crises across the world forcing everyone to take a drop in living standards, third world starvation and imperialist war. This is due to the working of the capitalist system.

There is no planning for social needs and the only goal is profit. If profit is not made, then we see companies going bust and the boom-bust cycle continues. As Ernst Mandel put it:

"Production for the market is production for unknown customers, in unknown quantities, and with unknown financial results."

Hopefully, we can all agree that the market system is wasteful and inefficient and needs to be replaced/reformed somewhat, if not, then I don't think you should be on here!

Are you in favour of a planned economy to meet social needs and allocate goods and services according to a rational plan? If so, why? If not, then what would you propose to put in its place? And why?

Cheers!

[Hyacinth]

I don't think you'd find any who don't; the debates on the left center more on what form that planning will take. Whether or not it will utilize market mechanisms, whether it will be centralized or decentralized, etc.

[Unclebananahead]

I know that I'm in favor. I'm still a bit uncertain as to what exact form it should take however. Obviously, you can't know with crystal ball-like clarity what sort of circumstances a future socialist society and it's planned economy will face. For this reason, it seems that most socialist/Marxist organizations table the specific details to be decided by the hypothetical future worker's government. As many here will surely tell you, Marx himself spent very little time talking and writing about socialism and instead focused his considerable intellectual efforts on critiquing capitalism. But I think it's helpful to consider some of the possible ways a future socialist society with a planned economy would function. The most thorough articulation I myself have come upon thus far, is the book "Towards a Post-Soviet Economy" by Cockshott & Cottrell. They suggest the use of computers to calculate supply and demand of commodities in real time so as to avoid waste and inefficiency. I highly suggest checking it out. It's available in its entirety online as a PDF file. Just Google the book's title and you should be able to find it.

[Tablo]

Everything works better with a plan. I don't even want to think of the insane shortage disasters that would occur without one. xP

[robbo203]

Every economy entails "planning". The most extreme free market economy you can think is full of "plans". Enterprises necessarily engage in planning in competing with each other in the market. This is why I really dislike this expression the "planned economy". It is utterly vacuous.

Really what the proponents of a planned economy are saying is that instead of having millions of plans you should have just one plan. Or , to put it differently, the millions of different plans are coordinated so that in effect they are absorbed into a single plan.

A moments thought will show that this is an absolutely ludicrous idea. For instance, it does not allow for any spontaneous adjustment as circumstances change. A central plan of this nature means that all inputs and outputs of the economy are calculated iand fixed n advance so that if the plan is to be implemented these ratios must remain intact and unaltered. Its a crackpot idea. Think about it. Suppose a hurricane comes along and destroys some productive capacity in the form of a factory producing some vital component for some consumer good. What does that mean? It means becuase all the inputs and outputs of the economy are interconnected and coordinated in the form of fixed ratios that the whole plan has to be redrawn. This is because any change in one part of the plan affects every other part of the plan.

Hurricanes are just one of a countless number of factors that could disrupt any such plan. The planners (even assuming they could draw up a plan involving literally millions of different inputs and outputs and calculate the correct ratios between them), would be involved 24/7 trying to readjust the plan to fit the changing circumstances. The plan would never ever get the chance to get off the ground!

Once you recognise this you then have to recognise the absolute need for a degree of spontaneity in the production process. In other words some kind of feedback mechanism which a planned economy in this literal sense , conspicuously lacks.

So please lets not talk anymore of the so called "planned economy". Any realistic economic model must involve both planning and spontaneity. You cannot have strictly speaking a fully planned economy

[LeftScot]

Thanks for the feedback so far guys! Very interesting to hear your views, I will defintely read that book you suggested uncle!

Robbo203, I think what we mean when we say planned economy is that the overall production and economic activity is planned to meet the social needs of the people whereas the market economy does not. We know there are elements of planning within the corporation, what I like to call this form of "partial rationality" that exists in capitalism. I think it is fair to say that the two are different.

The point you make about potential factors that could harm the planning process are very valid indeed, can you care to expound more on what you believe to be a realistic model?

[syndicat]

Planning within corporations is a source of relative power of the bureaucratic class within capitalism. they acquire power and sit on the flow of information, acquire expertise from doing the planning. but it's an authoritarian process in its relations to both consumers and workers. it's inefficient because "market relations" are not an adequate feedback mechanism and domination and exploitation of workers denies or excludes the knowledge and skills of workers as part of the process.

Any centralizing of the planning into a single body, such as the old Soviet Gosplan, would make this even worse. It would certainly be incompatible with workers management of production. The planning elite also have no real way to obtain accurate information about what people want.

I think the alternative is a form of decentralized social planning where everyone participates in it. Collective plans would be made by workplaces, communities. Communities would plan what sorts of goods and services they wish to be provided for themselves.

But there needs to be an appropriate interactive system so that worker production groups adjust their plans to accord with what people want. What we should avoid, tho, is the idea of some single body of planners to make up some overall social plan.

[Dean]

Some good points in here. The real question is, "who plans the economy/industry and to whose ends?" This should be re-organized to reflect popular interests in some kind of decentralized, democratic structure.

[NKVD]

I support an economy that mixes central planning with local community control.

[ckaihatsu]

I support an economy that mixes central planning with local community control.


I created a simple system that *may* be able to fulfill this necessity for a hybrid of top-down structures of large-scale coordination along with bottom-up, local methods of co-administration and labor roles.

Feedback is welcome....





Rotation system of work roles

A universal template for covering all work roles through time, going forward, for a post-capitalism, moneyless, collectivized political economy

by Chris Kaihatsu, [email protected], 10-10, for 'Allocating jobs' thread at RevLeft.com, tinyurl.com/24tohdc


- Everyone will assist everyone else in the local area with properly fulfilling the duties of any given work role.

- Unit of time per role must remain consistent.

- People in an area of work roles cannot switch their placement in line in the circle.

- Any roles at larger scales are either in addition to local work roles or else are entirely in replacement of smaller-scale work roles.

- New additions to an area of work roles enter the line in the circle at the bottom, beginning their rotation with a half-cycle of less-popular work roles.

- New collectively agreed-upon work roles will be placed in the existing sequence according to their ranking of a scale of 1 to 10, as averaged from the rankings submitted by those in the local area of work roles.


Rotation system of work roles

http://i51.tinypic.com/104qeqt.jpg

[Revolutionair]

Ckaihatsu, there has not been a single picture of yours that I understand.
As for "I support an economy that mixes central planning with local community control". You will probably end up with either the central bureaucracy gaining power. Or the communities breaking contact with the central bureaucracy. There is most certainly a power struggle here.

[ckaihatsu]

Ckaihatsu, there has not been a single picture of yours that I understand.


Hey, I'm sorry for your loss, but the text description *is* right there....





As for "I support an economy that mixes central planning with local community control". You will probably end up with either the central bureaucracy gaining power. Or the communities breaking contact with the central bureaucracy. There is most certainly a power struggle here.


Yes, well, this *is* the valid concern that occurs to anyone who has taken the time to think through central planning and what its implications may be.

We have the historical, bourgeois precedent with the Federalists and Anti-Federalists during the founding of the U.S., but we also know this to be an inherent issue regarding physical *scale*....

- Central administration has power: PRO- Can coordinate over very large geographic areas, greatly reducing duplication of effort to provide greater efficiencies and less waste of labor. Larger-scale projects possible. CON- May find an interest in consolidating its own power base at the expense of its correct professional functioning. Could stifle local initiatives in favor of large-scale, routinizing projects and work roles.

- Local community control has power: PRO- Can be very inclusive, in adaptable ways, of everyone in the locality. Local assets and resources may be utilized to the fullest, in organic ways. CON- Can be a restrictive environment and promote parochialism. May not be equipped with enough resources for expansive growth for its members and itself.

[Paul Cockshott]

I support an economy that mixes central planning with local community control.

I have never quite understood this appeal of localism.

In the modern world economy there is a division of labour that is international, only some service activities tend to be locally based in the sense the the producers and consumers are both situated within a small geographical area ( say a city ). Ever since the industrial revolution started a couple of centuries ago, industrial production has been for national or international markets. The idea that industry can be run on the basis of local control is an illusion. Historically it was one of Khrushchev's big mistakes to devolve economic planning to the republics. It produced inefficiencies, duplication and local rivalries.

[Pravda Soyuz]

A planned economy can allocate resources more effectively than the free market. while corporations seek to increase personal capital, a planned economy would be unified and would have better labor condition and pollution standards!

[ComradeOm]

Think about it. Suppose a hurricane comes along and destroys some productive capacity in the form of a factory producing some vital component for some consumer good. What does that mean?It means that you're an idiot for not providing redundancies, parallels or simply slack in the system. This is particularly the case when said factory has been identified as a critical or bottleneck facility. You should know that there is almost a century of experience available when drawing up and managing such plans. We have quite sophisticated techniques, that have been immeasurably enriched by advances in computational power in the past three decades, designed to tackle these very problems

But then it is a complete vulgarisation to imagine a planned economy as relying on The One Great Plan That Must Be Obeyed. The idea that every aspect of the economy need be recalibrated because of disruptions to a single factory is indeed ludicrous. Thankfully its also fantasy


I think the alternative is a form of decentralized social planning where everyone participates in it. Collective plans would be made by workplaces, communities. Communities would plan what sorts of goods and services they wish to be provided for themselves. And then what? Inviting feedback, particularly in gauging demand and capacity, is one thing but then these "collective plans" must be collated, resources allocated and production targets issued. You cannot have planning without planners and centralisation. This need not entail erecting some Soviet edifice but it also can't be done at a factory or community level

[Catma]

The most thorough articulation I myself have come upon thus far, is the book "Towards a Post-Soviet Economy" by Cockshott & Cottrell. They suggest the use of computers to calculate supply and demand of commodities in real time so as to avoid waste and inefficiency. I highly suggest checking it out. It's available in its entirety online as a PDF file. Just Google the book's title and you should be able to find it.

For the record, the only google result for "Towards a post soviet economy" is this thread.

I think you mean "Towards a new socialism" by those same authors.

[Unclebananahead]

For the record, the only google result for "Towards a post soviet economy" is this thread.

I think you mean "Towards a new socialism" by those same authors.

Indeed. That's right. I'm not certain why the name changed in my head, but anyhow that's the book I was referring to. I highly recommend it.

Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G using Tapatalk

[Jose Gracchus]

Every economy entails "planning". The most extreme free market economy you can think is full of "plans". Enterprises necessarily engage in planning in competing with each other in the market. This is why I really dislike this expression the "planned economy". It is utterly vacuous.

Really what the proponents of a planned economy are saying is that instead of having millions of plans you should have just one plan. Or , to put it differently, the millions of different plans are coordinated so that in effect they are absorbed into a single plan.

A moments thought will show that this is an absolutely ludicrous idea. For instance, it does not allow for any spontaneous adjustment as circumstances change. A central plan of this nature means that all inputs and outputs of the economy are calculated iand fixed n advance so that if the plan is to be implemented these ratios must remain intact and unaltered. Its a crackpot idea. Think about it. Suppose a hurricane comes along and destroys some productive capacity in the form of a factory producing some vital component for some consumer good. What does that mean? It means becuase all the inputs and outputs of the economy are interconnected and coordinated in the form of fixed ratios that the whole plan has to be redrawn. This is because any change in one part of the plan affects every other part of the plan.

Hurricanes are just one of a countless number of factors that could disrupt any such plan. The planners (even assuming they could draw up a plan involving literally millions of different inputs and outputs and calculate the correct ratios between them), would be involved 24/7 trying to readjust the plan to fit the changing circumstances. The plan would never ever get the chance to get off the ground!

Once you recognise this you then have to recognise the absolute need for a degree of spontaneity in the production process. In other words some kind of feedback mechanism which a planned economy in this literal sense , conspicuously lacks.

So please lets not talk anymore of the so called "planned economy". Any realistic economic model must involve both planning and spontaneity. You cannot have strictly speaking a fully planned economy

This is a ridiculous caricature of what "economic planning" means in the abstract, based on specious liberal criticism of Stalinism or vulgar libertarian socialist vague and mystical concepts of a more mass-based, participative, bottom-up, worker-directly-controlled, more humanistic, more flexible, and more consumer (real world and real people-centric, versus bureaucrat/manager-centric) grounding. I don't think the conceptual idea behind "planning" and how it functions both in the real world as you explained, or in the USSR.

I agree with some very specific liberal critiques of USSR-style party-state-bureaucratic-managerial economic planning and those libertarian values in the broad stroke, but the idea that socialist planning as a concept involves no fluidity and adaptation is absurd. The USSR economic plans could not be modeled in real time; large economic sectors can and are modeled and integrated by modern computational, AI, and information technologies today. An economic plan could have USSR-esque guidelines with self-automated, self-regulating wiggle-room and responsiveness in something approximating real-time. There's no reason the exchange and response of information cannot occur as much or more in a socialist economy for need than a capitalist market-statist economy (recall of course even bourgeois economists have done sophisticated work on how poverties of information, information asymmetries, and competitive-antagonistic motives against transparency and information transfer disintegrate the idealist assumptions of neoclassicism; see Stiglitz). At the rate AI and information technology is developing in high finance, I wouldn't be surprised if in 20 years the capitalist economy is in essence a bunch of slave AIs planning exploitatively efficient surplus value-maximizing machines in the form of corporations and their armies of technicians and drone-bureaucrats.

At that point, a planned economy would simply be reprogramming the major AI institutions (which increasingly are making mass trade decisions independently on behalf of bourgeois today) to run on different parameters with various automatic, participative, deliberative, and high political data-inputs of democratic and need based demand, parameter-setting values. Literally a programming-organizational change from "profit-based" to "democratic-and-basic-need-based". I've heard some about this being the bleeding edge of finance capital. Does anyone have any information on this?

[SamV]

I don't, actually. I prefer a mix between a gift and barter economy, and I want to get rid of currency all together. Planned economies simply do not work tbqh.

[ckaihatsu]

I don't, actually. I prefer a mix between a gift and barter economy, and I want to get rid of currency all together. Planned economies simply do not work tbqh.


The problem with the concepts of gift and barter economics, though, is that they're *consumer*-sided -- they pretty much rest on the premise that stuff has already been produced and the only thing left is figuring out how to distribute it.

I'd welcome a description of how labor, and labor hours, would be recognized within a gift / barter economy, particularly on mass collectivized industrial machinery, as in factories.

[ExUnoDisceOmnes]

I would suggest that capitalist economies such as the United States and Britain are planned by corporations. It's not a matter of whether or not the economy will be somehow planned, but a matter of WHO it's planned FOR.

When I think of an effective planned economy, I think of a decentralized structure where, since businesses are operated and jointly owned by the people through democratic processes, the people effectively seize control of the economy. It would be logical to have some sort of decentralized body to guide the economy, but the real shift under socialism and communism would be workers control: the economy will by operated, planned, and controlled by the workers FOR the workers.

I can't remember who I heard it from, but there was an interesting analogy that I heard. In essence, the internal structure of a corporation is a great example of how economics can be feasibly planned. Multinational conglomerates are able to very effectively manipulate the market for their benefit. We just need to turn that sort of mechanism around. Whereas conglomerates are run for PROFIT, they need to be run so as to benefit the people. An economy where every industry is brought together into a democratically run workers "conglomerate" which reports back to a central organization would be quite effective. A flexible macro plan would be made by the central organization, and micro planning would be undertaken by the "conglomerates".

[ckaihatsu]

When I think of an effective planned economy, I think of a decentralized structure where, since businesses are operated and jointly owned by the people through democratic processes, the people effectively seize control of the economy. It would be logical to have some sort of decentralized body to guide the economy,


Okay, let's say that this "decentralized body" is the prevailing political opinion of the day, as with a mass media journalism that reflects the day-to-day concerns of a self-liberated, fully workers'-collectivized civil society.

If public life comes to include common everyday inputs into the control of the major means of mass industrial production, then initiatives could rise and fall according to continuous self-organizing by those most concerned, with relatively equitable roles of participation into the same, as with local public issues today. (Of course a self-organizing liberated labor would have "veto power" over any popular mass initiatives that might rise up for possible implementation.)





but the real shift under socialism and communism would be workers control: the economy will by operated, planned, and controlled by the workers FOR the workers.


Yes.





I can't remember who I heard it from, but there was an interesting analogy that I heard. In essence, the internal structure of a corporation is a great example of how economics can be feasibly planned. Multinational conglomerates are able to very effectively manipulate the market for their benefit. We just need to turn that sort of mechanism around. Whereas conglomerates are run for PROFIT, they need to be run so as to benefit the people. An economy where every industry is brought together into a democratically run workers "conglomerate" which reports back to a central organization would be quite effective. A flexible macro plan would be made by the central organization, and micro planning would be undertaken by the "conglomerates".


Sure -- I regularly argue this point myself.

My (leading) question is around the regular material *dynamics* of such an arrangement. Would it be reasonable to ask for a general idea of how such a critical component as labor hours might be provided, and accounted-for, within such an arrangement -- ?





I'd welcome a description of how labor, and labor hours, would be recognized within a gift / barter economy, particularly on mass collectivized industrial machinery, as in factories.

[Technocrat]

A planned economy is the only one that can exist without a state of perpetual growth. As soon as you introduce "the free market," you also introduce "the maximum power principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_principle)." This leads to the hypertrophic nature of all systems which have a free market. Since infinite growth in a finite world is impossible, then yeah I would say a planned economy is necessary for a sustainable society.

[SamV]

The problem with the concepts of gift and barter economics, though, is that they're *consumer*-sided -- they pretty much rest on the premise that stuff has already been produced and the only thing left is figuring out how to distribute it.


Why can't the people make that choice for themselves?

[ckaihatsu]

The problem with the concepts of gift and barter economics, though, is that they're *consumer*-sided -- they pretty much rest on the premise that stuff has already been produced and the only thing left is figuring out how to distribute it.





Why can't the people make that choice for themselves?


Yeah, I have no problem with people pooling their demands, even to the point of specifying certain *types* and *formulations* of products and services, for a mass population.

To my previous post I'll add that while this mass human-needs demand can be done in a *decentralized* way, as through the regular mass media political culture, the *implementation* of such demands becomes an issue of *production*, and this is where the *centralization* aspect comes into play -- it's an intrinsic corollary to the very concept of a planned economy.

[ExUnoDisceOmnes]

A planned economy is the only one that can exist without a state of perpetual growth. As soon as you introduce "the free market," you also introduce "the maximum power principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_principle)." This leads to the hypertrophic nature of all systems which have a free market. Since infinite growth in a finite world is impossible, then yeah I would say a planned economy is necessary for a sustainable society.

This is a great argument... in fact it becomes easy to debunk capitalism in people's eyes once you prove that it is unsustainable.

[ExUnoDisceOmnes]

My (leading) question is around the regular material *dynamics* of such an arrangement. Would it be reasonable to ask for a general idea of how such a critical component as labor hours might be provided, and accounted-for, within such an arrangement -- ?

That's something that I've been thinking of myself. Modern businesses keep track of people's work and output when determining wages and benefits programs (especially when people work based on commission). Modern business also keeps track of hours worked.

I don't see why we can't use these same mechanisms to distribute wealth "to each according to his work". Perhaps the development of some sort of... formula would make sense? Of course, although I understand economics, I am by no means an expert, so I would leave that to someone more qualified :sleep:.

[ckaihatsu]

Perhaps the development of some sort of... formula would make sense? [...] I would leave that to someone more qualified :sleep:.


Thanks -- thank you very much (picks up microphone)....





I for one have a position that it is not a good idea to juxtapose labor hours against the provision of material goods and services. This only invites the obvious calculations in people's heads and the entire set of politics (and economics) to provide some kind of matching-up from the former component to the latter.

I advocate an approach that is premised on mass human-needs demand being fulfilled with whatever liberated mass collectivized society is able and willing to produce, with liberated labor having "veto power" over the mass demand while also self-organizing its own ranks.

Nonetheless what I advocate is not just a hazy one-big-potluck dream -- there's a model that spells out structural specifics with a mind towards material-based tracking and balancing:


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

http://postimage.org/image/35sw8csv8/


Also:

tinyurl.com/concise-communism-model

[Paul Cockshott]

That's something that I've been thinking of myself. Modern businesses keep track of people's work and output when determining wages and benefits programs (especially when people work based on commission). Modern business also keeps track of hours worked.

I don't see why we can't use these same mechanisms to distribute wealth "to each according to his work". Perhaps the development of some sort of... formula would make sense? Of course, although I understand economics, I am by no means an expert, so I would leave that to someone more qualified :sleep:.

One has to distinguish here between the direct hours that people spend making things or providing services on the one hand, and the indirect labour that society has to provide to qualify people to do the direct labour.
The formation of members of a society as skilled workers itself
demands labour time. The students or apprentices must work and
practice, and so with their instructors. Education and training
presuppose a particular allocation of society's man and woman
power: a certain number of people being current students and
instructors. That is a matter of population accounting that has
to be considered if a society decides to develop a new industry.
So if you want a space programme you have to educate and train
rocket scientists. If you want an urban bus network you have to
train drivers.

Doubtless it costs society more to train a rocket scientist, but
it does not follow that the rocket scientist should be paid more
than a bus driver for each hour on the job. The cost of training
is a cost born by society. So provided that trainee rocket
scientists and trainee bus drivers are paid whilst they train for
the time spent training, there is no reason why either needs to
be eventually credited with more than an hour for an hour on the
job.

The labour value of a bus ride or of a telephone call placed via
a satellite phone is just a name for the labour that society had
to allocate to produce that ride, or phone call. It includes the
labour expended producing rocket fuel, and also the labour
expended in the All Union Institute for the Training of Rocket
Technicians or in the municiple driver training school. So there
is no need to 'deduct these from the distributable fund'. These
costs fall under the rubric of what each individual gives to
society in time, they get back in equivalent form. If the total
social cost of bus ride, including drivers labour, fuel,
training, wear and trear is 3 mins, then the passenger is charged
3 mins on the labour credit card.

There would thus be a distinction between what a person is paid
for an hour's work, and the cost of that hour's work when entered
into the labour accounts of the producers collective. When the
South Star Rocket Launching Collective proposed to the All Union
Planning Collective that a new GlobeStar network of satellites be
constructed, they would have to budget for both the direct labour
and the training costs of that labour.

[ckaihatsu]

Doubtless it costs society more to train a rocket scientist, but it does not follow that the rocket scientist should be paid more than a bus driver for each hour on the job. The cost of training is a cost born by society. So provided that trainee rocket scientists and trainee bus drivers are paid whilst they train for the time spent training, there is no reason why either needs to be eventually credited with more than an hour for an hour on the job.


Sorry, I'm going to play devil's advocate here....

I don't think that the actual labor effort for doing rocket science and driving a bus are comparable, education / training time aside. All other things being equal we may happen to find that simply *fewer* people are willing to step into those shoes, for whatever reasons, compared to gripping the steering wheel -- and this is *outside* of current market-based considerations.

Certain kinds of work -- white-collar -- is more "exploratory" and "cutting-edge" over time, on an ongoing basis. In this way the very type of work is more "managerial" because it puts one in an active, participatory role in the further development of civilization. This is distinctly different from a routinized role like driving a bus in which the responsibilities are cut-and-dried and very much straightforward.

Society should be co-administered in such a way as to politically *concretize* what extents we think civilization should go. We can't abide a primitivist absolute, focusing only on the un-material domain of human existence as natural organisms, nor should we strive for a strictly hierarchical topology with the goal of squeezing out a breakneck pace of technological developments, either.

A post-market, mass consciously intentional political economy would enable humanity to finally direct its collective will to this grandest of issues, so as to realize our birthright role as the "management species" of this planet.





The labour value of a bus ride or of a telephone call placed via a satellite phone is just a name for the labour that society had to allocate to produce that ride, or phone call.


This is just apples-and-oranges since driving a bus requires *ongoing* labor, while satellite phone calls are leveraging *past* labor that has been *completed*.

[Le Socialiste]

I am curious to see how many leftists out there would activley support the idea of a planned economy and its many benefits.

Clearly, with the market-capitalist system, there is a grave danger to humanity....global warming, there is great economic crises across the world forcing everyone to take a drop in living standards, third world starvation and imperialist war. This is due to the working of the capitalist system.

There is no planning for social needs and the only goal is profit. If profit is not made, then we see companies going bust and the boom-bust cycle continues. As Ernst Mandel put it:
"Production for the market is production for unknown customers, in unknown quantities, and with unknown financial results."

Hopefully, we can all agree that the market system is wasteful and inefficient and needs to be replaced/reformed somewhat, if not, then I don't think you should be on here!

Are you in favour of a planned economy to meet social needs and allocate goods and services according to a rational plan? If so, why? If not, then what would you propose to put in its place? And why?


There is little doubt that an economy built upon the ideals and theories of capitalism will result in the prolongation of human misery and suffering. The boom and bust financial cycle and mentality has dragged the entire world down, save for private Capital's "pioneering" protectorate, who continue to profit in the midst of our latest crisis. Now, any leftist (by which I mean socialists, communists, anarchists, and syndicalists) worth his/her salt would agree that a privatized, "free" economy can and will do nothing in the way of shared betterment and equitable distribution (both in terms of society, economics, and governance). The answer is, of course, that of a planned economy. The question is, however, to what extent is this type of planning to go, and how is it to be implemented? Answers here will vary, and rightfully so! Here is my take on the concept:

A planned economy managed by a centralized, non-democratic bureaucratic body can only lead to corruption, mismanagement/poor allocation of resources, and despotism. If not immediately, then gradually. An economy that revolves around decentralized planning (or a mixture of workers' councils, unions, and syndicates) is ideal. Not only does it place all matters before the people themselves, but it is done so in a way that can be democratic, transparent, and effective/efficient. By beginning the democratically-run economy at grassroots level, we can (hopefully) avoid partisan/sectarian stalemates and divisions.