Participatory Planning Through Negotiated Coordination

Description

PAT DEVINE:

"Part of a project that is designed to assist in the revival of the movement for socialism by developing a well-defined model of participatory democratic planning. The aim is to take seriously both the negative experience of the Soviet model of administrative command planning and the positive insights of the Austrian school’s recent reworking of the socialist calculation debate. The principal objective of the model of participatory planning through negotiated coordination is to outline a possible architecture for the institutions and processes through which a self-governing society might operate. I understand a self-governing society to be one in which the diverse voluntary associations constituting civil society exercise control over both the state and the economy. In relation to the economy this means that the freely associated citizens, not just producers, decide on the use to be made of society’s productive potential, rather than this being determined by the coercion of the state or the coercion of market forces. A self-governing society is one in which those who are affected by an activity participate equally in the decision making relating to that activity, in proportion to the extent to which they are affected by it. For this to be real, rather than just formal, requires equal access to the resources needed for effective participation. In addition to the abolition of the class division between those who own the means of production and those who don’t, and of the exploitation and oppression arising from that relationship, the abolition of the social division of labor, ªthe antithesis between intellectual and physical labour (Marx, 1974, 347), is also necessary.

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My model of participatory planning is specifically designed to enable the ex ante coordination of investment to take place through negotiation. It is based on a distinction between market exchange and market forces. Market exchange involves the sale/ purchase of the output of existing productive capacity. The operation of market forces is the process through which changes in the structure of productive capacity brought about by investment and disinvestment are coordinated in capitalism (and market socialism). The model outlined below retains market exchange but replaces market forces by negotiated coordination."

(http://gesd.free.fr/devine.pdf)

More information

Bibliography:

• Adaman, Fikret, and Pat Devine. 1994.

1. Socialist Renewal: Lessons from the `Calculation Debate’.º Studies in Political Economy, 43. . 1996.
2. The Economic Calculation Debate: Lessons for Socialists.º Cambridge Journal of Economics, 20:5. . 1997.
3. On the Economic Theory of Socialism.º New Left Review, 221. . 2001.
4. Participatory Planning as a Deliberative Democratic Process: A Response to Hodgson’s Critique.º Economy and Society, 30:2 (May), 229239. .
5. Forthcoming. ªA Reconsideration of the Theory of Entrepreneurship: A Participatory Approach.º Review of Political Economy. Albert, Michael, and Robin Hahnel. 1991. The Political Economy of Participatory Economics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

• Devine, Pat. 1988.

1. Democracy and Economic Planning. Cambridge, England: Polity Press; Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. . 1992.
2. Market Socialism or Participatory Planning?º Review of Radical Political Economics, 24:3 & 4 (FallWinter), 6789. . 1997.
3. Socialism as Social Transformation.º In Michele Cangiani, ed., The Milano Papers: Essays in Societal Alternatives. Montreal, Canada: Black Rose Books. . 2002.
4. The Institutional Context of Entrepreneurial Activity.º In Fikret Adaman and Pat Devine, eds., Economy and Society: Money, Capitalism and Transition. Montreal, Canada: Black Rose Books.