Planning for Entropy
Description
"a Research group of the Research Centre on Social Innovations and Transformations at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada. This group takes part in a field of research in resurgence over the decade: postcapitalist political economy studies. This field concerns all research on the political and economic functioning of a society that deliberately evolves outside the institutions of capitalism."
Research
Research domains:
The format of Democratic Economic Planning proposals
"addresses the question of the form of post-capitalist proposals. For several decades, the usual form of proposals has been the coherent political-economic abstract model: a structure of interrelated economic and political institutions that responds to the major needs of collective life. Should we move beyond this form to a more agile and adaptable proposal, like the modules’ approach currently in discussion?
The role of prices and money after capitalism
aims to tackle the difficult question of the role of prices. Models from the 1990s use some form of indicative prices. Two severe criticisms of this choice have emerged. The first considers that reducing decision-making to a single indicator is a serious problem from an ecological point of view and that multifactor accounting should be at the heart of decision-making. The second considers that any price, any use of money itself, will destroy the bonds of solidarity on which a post-capitalist approach must be based.
Democratic economic planning and respecting planetary boundaries
seeks to answer the question: how can we conceive of planetary boundaries and build an economic and political system that fully integrates them? Democratic planning models devised in the 1990s often reduce the environment to its impact on human communities or leave the issue to open political debate to be resolved on a case-by-case basis. Can we overcome this dichotomy and improve the integration of self-limitation within these models?
Social reproduction and post-capitalism
aims to resolve a contradiction confronted by postcapitalist thought. Should we think of a political and economic organization specific to social reproduction, at the risk of exceptionalizing it? Or should we try to integrate these tasks as closely as possible with other economic responsibilities, at the risk of forgetting their particularities?
Prefiguration, community economics and democratic planning
aims to think about the place from which post-capitalism is envisioned. Instead of being rooted in theoretical debate, we’ll be looking at how the experiences of communities trying to live here and now in resistance to globalized capitalism can inspire us to build a society that will go beyond this system."
More information
Bibliography
Bibliography
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