Pat Devine - Democracy and Economic Planning

[Victus Mortuum]

I'm looking for either a free copy of this book or a free good discussion/summary of the basic system he proposes in said book. Anybody have any references? Or does anyone just know what is proposed in it?

I'm particularly interested in how his system relates and differs from that of parecon...

[syndicat]

you'll have a hard time finding a copy. that's unfortunate because it's worth taking a look at.

there is a certain tradition in socialism on how to solve the question of how to make production accountable to society. there are really 3 possible solutions. 1. the market. 2. central planning. 3. some system of negotiation between consumers and workers that is coordinated, not controlled by profit seeking in the manner of a market system.

the first example of alternative 3 historically was guild socialism, and if you're interested in the history of this worker-consumer negotiation idea, i'd recommend also taking a look at GDH Cole "Guild Socialism Restated."

one problem with guiild socialism is that they didn't have a good answer to the question how prices are formed.

devine differs from participatory economics in several ways. first, he's not a market abolitionist. he makes a distinction between "market forces" and "market relations" and I frankly couldn't understand his distinction. he's not always very clear. he claims that in his version of negotiated coordination there are market relations in a limited way but not "market forces."

another difference from participatory economics is that he doesn't focus as much on basing the system on direct, participatory democracy to the extent that Hahnel and Albert do.

and, third, related to this, Devine's system is a bit more statist. that is, he doesn't think in terms of getting rid of the state. so his form of negotiated coordination is less consistent with libertarian socialism or anarchism than either the Hahnel/Albert model or Cole's original guild socialism (which was influenced by syndicalism).