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11Al Campbell1 WHAT IS SOCIAL ECONOMIC PLANNING?
The attempts to build post-capitalist societies in the twentieth century all used variations of the material-balances economic planning procedures developed first in the USSR. Most advocates of transcending capitalism came to accept the idea that the desired new society could operate only with some variation of such an economic planning tool. One part of the current thorough reconsideration of how to build a human-centered post-capitalist society is reconsidering how it should carry out, in a way consistent with its goals, the social economic planning that all systems of production require. This brief work first addresses a number of misconceptions and myths connected with the identification of planning for socialism with the material-balances planning system. After that, and connected to real-world experiments now going on in a few countries in the world, the work considers if the required social economic planning could occur through conscious control of markets, for countries attempting to build a socialism that uses markets for both the necessary articulation of all the steps in its many production chains and for the distribution of consumer goods.
Keywords: economic planning, socialist planning, socialism, post-capitalist. DOI: 10.37930/1990-9780-2021-4-70-28-38
УДК 330.352
I will begin with this article's conclusions so that its principal message will not be lost among the many considerations that lead to it, and answer to the following two question: what is social economic planning? and what must social economic planning be for a desirable post-capitalist society?
Conclusions. Economic planning is human planning applied to the economy, nothing more, nothing less. It is human nature to plan concerning everything we do in our lives, with no guarantee as to how close future reality will be to what we plan. On the other hand, the ability of humans to create some vison of the future based on the past, but different from it, and then conceptualize how to try to realize that vision, is a uniquely human characteristic, a differentia specifica of being human. A socially planned economy has the potential to be more efficient, to convert given inputs into more outputs, than a capitalist economy. That is not, however, the fundamental reason that a desirable human-centered post-capitalist economy must be socially planned. Rather, the goal of such a society is to support and promote humanity's "historical and
1 Al Campbell, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Utah, Vice-Chair of International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE).
ontological vocation to become more fully human" [6, p. 40]. People's collective development of their potential humanity requires more than that they exist under some desirable conditions (it does require that, but that alone is not enough). The unfolding of people's full human potential requires that humanity collectively decides what conditions are best for promoting and supporting its own never-ending human development, and also how to create those conditions. The conditions of a cow's life are good; all the food it wants, whatever shelter it needs, immediate medical care if it is sick, even air-conditioned barns if useful to increase milk production. But such an existence is not the goal of humans developing their human potential. Cows are only "consumers" of good conditions. They are not "active agents", "protagonists", who themselves decide on, and then create, their own desired conditions for both well-being and development. Cows have a life where well-being is created for them by others, Plato's philosopher king or some modern incarnation of that. An essential part of humans being "more fully human" is the collective self-determination by the members of society of all aspects of their lives. Social economic planning is humans acting protagonistically to determine what would be best for society to produce with its available social labor to promote and support their own human development, and then collectively deciding what they consider the best way to produce that.
Introduction
The goal of this short work is to contribute to the on-going discussion of social economic planning, and in particular to consider its role in in building a desirable human-centered post-capitalist society. The article's content is presented as twelve assertions concerning social economic planning, each accompanied by brief supporting material. The conclusion is approached in four steps. Section II begins by considering planning in general, viewing it ontologically in relation to humans. This section briefly creates a frame in which all the subsequent considerations of social economic planning understand it as the general activity of human planning applied to the particular issue of social economic activity. Section III then shifts to the history of social economic planning. A first assertion in that section concerns social economic planning in all systems of economic production throughout history. But given that the goal of this paper is to discuss the role of social economic planning in a desirable human-centered post-capitalist society, this historical section mostly addresses the role of social economic planning in capitalism, the socio-economic system that the desired future system will emerge from. In particular, it addresses some broadly held myths concerning capitalism and planning that confuse considerations of planning in a human-centered post-capitalist society. Finally, with all the previous material understood as background for it, section IV will consider the central concern of this paper, the role of social economic planning in a desirable human-centered post-capitalist society. The social discussion on that issue is both on-going and voluminous, and so there is no intention here to address all aspects of this issue. To the contrary, this article is intended only as comments concerning a few of the much-discussed dimensions of that issue. The conclusion to this work has already been presented above.
This work will use the adjective "socialist" as a synonym for the phrase "desirable human-centered post-capitalist". In the face of capitalism's many brutal and inhuman aspects, its birth and development were accompanied by many ideas on how society could be organized better and more humanely. Many of these visions referred to themselves as "socialist", though others had other labels, for example "anarchist". This author is well aware that in the twentieth century the adjective "socialist" came to be widely used (certainly not universally) in the capitalist world to talk about something very different, visions of societies that were less
inhumane than what existed but were still capitalist. Similarly, in most of that part of the world which broke from capitalism in the twentieth century, the USSR and later many countries in Eastern Europe, China, and a few additional countries, the term "socialist" lost many (but not all) of the "desirable human-centered" aspects of the term which had characterized socialist visions of the 1800s. For these reasons many people trying to build a "desirable human-centered post-capitalist" society today eschew the term "socialist" for their vision. This author will use the term "socialism" consistent with its broad sense in the 1800s. He maintains that using the word in this way is consistent with the human-centered post-capitalist visons of many people today who emphatically refuse to call their visions socialist because of the confusion caused by the historical abuse of the word.
This author sees his ideas on the necessity and nature of planning as very largely, though not entirely, consistent with those of Marx and Engels. Their ideas, however, are not understood to be "revealed truth" for "proving" the ideas expressed here, nor for any other ideas this author expresses in any of his other writings on desirable human-centered post-capitalist societies. To the contrary, their work is seen as a (very fruitful) source of ideas and inspiration because of its quality. Academic and scientific honesty then requires the author to acknowledge this, just as he would any other sources.
The word "communism" will not be used by this author in this work. It does, however, appear in the closing quote by Che Guevara, and hence it needs to be addressed very briefly. This author uses the terms "socialism" and "communism" approximately in the way they came to be used after around 1890 by people who considered their work to be in the frame developed by Marx and Engels. The first phase of the post-capitalist society, some of whose fundamental characteristic were indicated by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Program [8] where it was presented as "the lower phase of communism", came to called "socialism". The word "communism" came to be used to refer to a subsequent phase of that society, which Marx called there "a higher phase of communism". Hence the word "communism" in the quote by Che below is simply understood in this work to refer to a more developed phase of the same human-centered post-capitalist society for which the word "socialism" is used as a synonym in this work.
1. Planning in General and Human Nature
There is a broadly held view among many advocates of socialism that a fundamental difference between the desired human-centered post-capitalist society and capitalism, which they wish to transcend, is that socialism will be socially planned while capitalism is not. This is simply incorrect. The next section will talk about social planning and capitalism directly. Underlying the fact that all existing capitalisms have always involved social planning, however, are two even deeper ontological points concerning human planning and human nature, given here as assertions 1 and 2: Being human is sufficient to guarantee the activity of planning, and the genuine ability to plan is necessary to be human.
Considering the relation between the activity of planning and human nature in one direction, planning is an inherent aspect of being human.
Assertion 1 concerning planning and human nature: Planning is an inherent aspect of human existence, of the way humans live. Being human is sufficient to guarantee the activity of planning.
Considering the relation between the activity of planning and human nature in the other direction, planning is a necessary criterion for inclusion in what we consider human. No other animals have that ability, and independent of anything else, the ability to plan by itself differentiates humans from other animals.
Assertion 2 concerning planning and human nature: Humans' ability to plan, in the way that they do, is one differentia specifica of being human. The genuine ability to plan is necessary to be human.
Both of these views on the relation between planning and human nature were among the central concepts of the European Enlightenment, and numerous other philosophies from other times and from other parts of the world, that held that humans were capable, collectively by themselves, of creating a better world. In a well-known passage by a particularly influential advocate of socialism from the 1800s, himself strongly influenced by the European Enlightenment, Karl Marx wrote (here referring to economic activity, but he would argue the same for any human activity):
We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realizes a purpose of his own ... [9, p. 188]. Throughout the rest of this work economic planning is understood as human planning applied to the economy, nothing more, nothing less.
2. The History of Social Economic Planning Assertion 3 concerning human history and social economic planning: Humans have always engaged in social economic planning.
Even prior to the development of agriculture, both the activities of gathering and especially that of hunting involved social economic planning, in accord with our collective species-nature. But with the development of sedentary agriculture around 12,000 years ago (in its first locations), the complexity of social economic planning took a first major jump. It took another large jump in complexity with the development of irrigation systems in Egypt and Mesopotamia 8,000 years ago, and independently in Peru at least 6,000 years ago. All major human economic systems since then have included, and could not have existed without, extensive human planning.
Given that the goal of this article is to raise some considerations concerning the role of social economic planning in a desirable human-centered post-capitalist society, this historical section will mostly consider the role of social economic planning in capitalism, the socioeconomic system that the desired future system will have to emerge from. Specifically, it will address two broadly held myths concerning capitalism and planning, illusions which confuse considerations of planning in a human-centered post-capitalist society.
Assertion 4. It is necessary to dismiss myth 1, that Capitalist economies can operate without social planning.
To the contrary, no capitalist economy has ever existed without social planning. Consider as illustrations of this claim examples from two different time periods, different phases of capitalism. The first is mercantilism. This well-known doctrine applied explicit social economic planning. Executing this type of social economic planning was a central political concern of the most advanced capitalist economies from the 1500s through the 1700s. It was at least a major factor, and in many cases the major factor, of the wars between the emerging European capitalist economies, which were central in shaping how that period of European (and through colonialism, world) history unfolded.
Of more concern to this work are the capitalist economies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from which the desired human-centered post-capitalist societies are intended to emerge. Particularly obvious are a small set of examples of "extreme capitalist economic planning", for instance the British and US capitalist economies during WWII [4, chapter 2]. Another example in this category which is often referred to, particularly by advocates of socialism who are interested in developing an "indicative" economic planning procedure as opposed to a "material-balances" procedure, is "French Indicative Planning" after WWII. This will be discussed further in the next section on social economic planning for socialism.
Champions of the myth that capitalist economies can operate without social economic planning respond to such incontrovertible historical examples of capitalism carrying out these types of economic planning by responding that "yes, capitalism can socially plan its economy, but it does so only under extreme condition like wars or extensive social breakdown, not under 'normal' conditions". This is patently false.
Modern "normal capitalism" is permanently engaged in anti-inflation planning, trade promotion, and industrial policies, among many other types of social economic planning. Those who maintain that modern capitalism can operate without social economic planning deal with this reality concerning capitalism in one of two ways. A first way is to deny that these are "really social economic planning". The discussion of social economic planning above, or even just looking up the word "planning" in a dictionary, exposes this argument as an unconvincing exercise in "linguistic gymnastics". The more common way to support their claim that normal modern capitalism does not require social planning is simply to ignore the large amount of evidence of this type to the contrary.
The sum of the effects from all these different normal types of social economic planning (including how well it is done) is absolutely central to how well current capitalist economies perform. Concerning modern trade promotion policies, note that the difference between them and mercantilism, which was so clearly social economic planning, is not the difference between social economic planning and its absence, but rather the difference in degree on a spectrum between stronger and less strong social economic planning. The same understanding holds for the modern industrial policies2 as being on a spectrum with French Indicative Planning [5] differing only by the degree of planning involved.
2 While the extremely important capitalist social planning tool of industrial policies has a long history under capitalism, its modern extent and form arose only after WWII. The neoliberal form of capitalism ideologically argued against such policies, but their value to capitalist performance meant that they continued despite this declared opposition, even if their use was reduced in many countries. The lethargic performance of the world economy since the "Great Recession" of 2008-9, together with their extremely important and successful use as part of China's strong economic performance for decades, has led to the restoration of capitalist ideological respectability to industrial policies. The economic consequences of the COVID pandemic since 2020 have reinforced that. See the UNCTAD 2018 evaluation: Industrial policies have become ubiquitous. UNCTAD's global survey of industrial policies shows that, over the past five years alone, at least 84 countries - both developed and developing, accounting for about 90 per cent of global GDP - have adopted formal industrial development strategies. UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). 2018. World Investment Report 2018. Geneva: United Nations Publications. Available at https://unctad.org/ system/files/official-document/wir2018_en.pdf (Accessed 17/10/2021). and UNCTAD's its June 23, 2021 panel by a collection of leading academic authorities on industrial policies, "Is Industrial Policy the Key to Building Back Better?". Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQEA6y-OZFA (Accessed 17/10/2021).
With the assumption that a desirable human-centered post-capitalist society will require it to be socially planned as most advocates of socialism maintain, this false myth can be stated in an equivalent way, a way maintained by many advocates of socialism: A fundamental difference between a socialist economy and a capitalist economy is that the former is socially planned, and the latter is not. This false myth harms the project of building a socialist society. The myth implies that human well-being will automatically be improved by instituting any form of planned economic production. To the contrary, what socialist economic planning needs is social economic planning whose goal it is to support human well-being, as opposed to social economic planning which supports capital accumulation, capitalism's goal. To properly address what sort of social economic planning will be needed to create a human-centered post-capitalist society, that economic planning needs to be considered and discussed as a necessary change in existing social economic planning. Only in this way can the necessary question be posed: "What type of social economic planning will be suitable for promoting the goals of our vison of socialism?". That question is often dropped from consideration because of the false belief that social economic panning in any form necessarily promotes socialism.
A second myth about capitalism has also misdirected thinking about what type of social economic planning is necessary for socialism.
Assertion 5. It is necessary to dismiss myth 2, that The terms "market economy" and "capitalist economy" are synonyms.
To the contrary, markets were also used in slave, feudal, and other modes of production. Markets didn't just exist on the margins of these systems of production, operations by merchant capital for luxury goods consumed by the ruling class, but rather were embedded in the central functioning of the feudal, slave, and other modes of production. Capitalism indeed requires markets for its circuits of capital by which it carries out its exploitation that is the goal of all class societies, but markets have also existed in almost all modes of production, even though they carry out different roles in these other systems than in capitalism. Markets are necessary for capitalism, but they are not sufficient to define a mode of production as capitalist.
3. Social Economic Planning for a Human-Centered Post-Capitalist Society
The nature of a particular economic planning process is established by the interaction of its goals (both its broad social goals and its specific goals for social production) and the particular tools (procedures) it uses to both socially determine its production goals and to achieve these. Planning tools cannot be evaluated if one does not establish first what goals they are supposed to be supporting and promoting. Aphoristically: "you can't know what will help you, if you do not know what you want".
Assertion 6. The broad social goal of economic planning for a socialist society is to support and promote the goal of the socialist society which it is an aspect of. The goal of a socialist society is the collective self-development by the members of society of their human potential.
Historically, the many visions of a human-centered post-capitalist society arose out of the desire to negate capitalism's many brutal and inhuman aspects. From this, the heart of socialism is its different overall social goal from capitalism's. Capitalism's goal, the pursuit of which drives how it functions, is the production and appropriation of surplus-value, the self-expansion of capital. Any analysis of the form and functioning of socialism or, as is being done here, of any of its aspects such as socialist economic planning, should begin with socialism's different goal. In accord with this, and always stressing that there
are different ways to state what the goals of socialism are, or the central goal is, this author has included brief discussions of the central goal of socialism in many of his previous works. For example:
For socialism, the central goal is almost universally accepted to be "human development", or some equivalent expression of that same goal such as "the development of one's human potential", or "the opportunity to develop potential abilities", etc. Freire uses the longer but slightly more suggestive expression "man's ontological and historical vocation to become more fully human". While still fairly abstract, a set of more concrete and operative sub-goals, which one very often sees put forward as the goals of socialism, actually receive their justification from their support for socialism's central goal just listed. The most commonly cited of these are self-determination (or "self-governance" or simply "democracy"), equality and solidarity. Recently the protection of the natural environment has been included as a goal in almost all discussions of socialism [2, p. 113].
Assertion 7. The narrower "economic goal" of economic planning for a socialist society is to socially determine what society would like to produce with the available social labor and material resources, how to produce it, and then to socially do so (provide for the "well-being" of all members of society).
Assertion 8. Social economic planning is a toolfor achieving socialism's goals. As any tool, its usefulness is evaluated by how well it supports andpromotes those goals. Specifically, the usefulness of a tool is evaluated independently of the way that it operates.
Notwithstanding significant variations between the concrete applications, there was fundamentally only one experiment in the twentieth century of using the tool of planning to operate a post-capitalist economy, what has become known as the "material-balances" system. Considered as a tool to be evaluated by how well it achieves the socialist society's broad social and narrow economic goals, a priori there is no reason why another type of planning tool could not be created to socially determine what society would like to produce with the available social labor and material resources, how to produce it, and then to socially do so. The history of the material-balances procedures as applied in the USSR is that they generated impressive growth for many decades, and then they lost effectiveness and the rate of growth they generated declined markedly.
Assertion 9. The general performance of one possible tool for economic planning, "material-balances" procedures, could be vastly improved from its twentieth-century performances, in regards to both the broad social and narrow economic goals of socialism.
On the one hand, this is possible because of today's communication and information technologies that were not available until the end of the twentieth century. On the other hand, these technological changes from the twentieth-century material-balances models alone would not be enough to create satisfactory tools for social economic planning for socialism. In addition and equally important, fundamental changes would need to be made in the social organization of the planning procedures. Of central importance here is that all of society be protagonistically involved through socialist democracy in determining what to produce and how to produce it, and then in executing the attempt to do so. This would be radically different from the system in the USSR in the twentieth century and the models derivative from that, where a narrow sector of society determined and controlled the execution of the social planning that it claimed would be best for society as a whole.
A number of theoreticians today advocate for this approach to improved material-balances procedures. Arguably the most developed model of this type is by Paul Cockshott
and Alain Cottrell, which they have presented in many works over the last three decades.3 This author finds their work concerning the technological possibilities to be very important, but does not find the social organization they advocate to be appropriate or adequate for socialist self-determination and collective protagonism. But regardless of one's view on the social organization of their proposed technologically-updated material-balances system, and regardless of whether one holds that these shortcomings could be corrected in a somewhat different appropriate material-balances system (which this author believes could be done), the current reality is that no country in the world is carrying out significant experiments with such radically improved material-balances procedures as a method of economic planning. For this reason, this possibility will not be further discussed in this work.
Cuba, Vietnam and China maintain that they are building socialism4, and all have developed new non-material-balance systems for planning their economies.5 To consider the possible alternative procedure to material balances for planning a socialist economy that this work will put forward requires that one first dismiss a third common twentieth-century myth about socialist planning and markets. Two almost logically equivalent expressions of this myth are commonly encountered.
Assertion 10. It is necessary to dismiss myth 3, that Social economic planning for a post-capitalist society must be some type of a material-balances procedure. A second almost logically equivalent common expression of this myth is that Economic planning for a post-capitalist society and markets are incompatible.
The rejection of myth 3 in its first form in assertion 10 logically requires that there must be some alternative to a material-balances procedure that could function as planning for a post-capitalist society. In line with the real-world experiments going on in Cuba, Vietnam and China, the author puts forward here an alternative tool to the material-balances procedures for planning for a post-capitalist society.6
Assertion 11. For a socialist society that uses markets for both the necessary articulation of all the steps in its many production chains and for the distribution of consumer goods,
3 For example, their most comprehensive single presentation of all their ideas considering a society [3].
4 China generally stresses that what it is building differs significantly in a number of ways from the "standard view of socialism of the twentieth century" (even considering all the variations of that idea) by saying that it is building "socialism with Chinese characteristics". For the points argued in this article there is no reason to enter into the current broad debate among advocates of socialism over whether China is building socialism or capitalism. For this work China is presented as an example of an economy that uses markets extensively that has a strong and effective planning instrument, through which it can effectively direct its economy toward producing what its planners want to be produced.
5 All three of these countries of course do use material balances for some aspects of their national planning (particularly in the state sector), as do many capitalist countries, as well as most large capitalist corporations in the world (in order to coordinate production between departments or divisions - for this latter idea see for example [10]. The point of concern here, however, is that these three countries also extensively use non-material-balances tools for their national planning, such as their control of prices, control much of the national investment by which they can change production over time, control of the interest rate, and control of the banking system.
6 Note that it is necessary to reject the second form of the false myth in assumption 10 before one can consider any such proposal.
procedures to control production and distribution through influencing the operation of those markets would be an alternative tool for planning in a socialist economy. Examples of this type of tool for the of control ofproduction include the control ofprices, the control of much of the national investment by which supply can be changed, the control of interest rates, and/ or the control of the banking system.
Three comments follow concerning assertion 11
Comment 1 concerning assertion 11. A positive statement of the rejection of the myth in assertion 10 is: Theoretically, there is nothing incompatible between the concept of socialism and using markets for both the necessary articulation of all the steps in its economy's many production chains and the distribution of consumer goods, with markets being defined as institutions for the exchange of equivalents, as they have been throughout history. In particular relative to this assertion, the existence of markets in themselves in no way implies exploitation, the living by some people off the labor of others, which is a central proscription of socialism.
Comment 2 concerning assertion 11. The experiments in strong procedures for planning and managing social economic production in economies with extensive markets in Cuba, Vietnam and China referred to above give a social importance to the study of the approach to socialist planning proposed in assertion 11 that is absent for the theoretical proposals for radically improved material-balances procedures.
Comment 3 concerning assertion 11. The term "market socialism" has come to refer to theoretical systems where production is carried out for capital to earn profits through exploitation, and then the government redistributes some of what capital has expropriated back to the actual producers of value. Hence a market-socialist system is a capitalist system and not a socialist system. What is being discussed here is something different, "socialism with markets". As the words in its name say, socialism with markets is a socialist system, unlike market socialism. A socialist system with markets is not a market socialist system, and a market socialist system is not a socialist system with markets. "Market socialism" is not a synonym for "socialism with markets".
It has been argued throughout this article that social economic planning is essential for a desirable human-centered post-capitalist society. A final assertion about the nature of social economic planning contextualizes it more broadly as an aspect of socialism. There are of course scores of different aspects of any type of society and one must not be overly reductionist, reality is complex. But when socialism is viewed in terms of negating capitalism's most immediate barriers to further human development, social economic planning can be considered as one of socialism's four central and defining pillars.
Assertion 12. When socialism is viewed in terms of the changes it represents from the capitalism that it will emerge from, social economic planning is one of socialism's three central and defining pillars:
i) an end to anyone living off the labor of anyone else (exploitation). This can be done by every person having claim to goods and services produced by society with the same amount of social labor in them that the person contributes to social production (with collective and social goods, which will be even more important in a socialist society than in a capitalist society, appropriately included in the calculation). A society without anyone living off the labor of others also represents the end of class societies.
ii) collective (or social) self-determination (or self-governance). This can also be referred to as socialist democracy, which must be both participatory democracy and discursive democracy. This is understood to mean that all social decisions are collectively determined
and implemented by everyone who is "significantly enough affected" by the decision,1 with the demarcations for the groups appropriate for making each social decision themselves socially determined.
iii) social and protagonistic planning of the economy, and all other aspects of society.
iv) developmental labor. Labor that in its execution supports and promotes human development.
Campbell (2022) presents further comments concerning a possible structure for social economic planning for socialism.8
V. Closing
As stated at the beginning of this article before the Introduction, the Conclusion has been put at its very opening to assure that readers will see it, and not get lost considering the arguments given to build support for the conclusion before they see what the conclusion is. It should be re-read now in light of the support for it presented in this work. This article will close with a quote from Che Guevara reflecting, in an extremely terse statement, the position of this work on the necessity of social economic planning for a human-centered post-capitalist society, and what that planning represents at its most fundamental level.
... planning is the way of being of a socialist society, its defining category and the point
where man's consciousness manages, finally, to synthesize and direct the economy
towards its goal: the full liberation of human beings in the frame of a communist society
[1, 315-6] (translation by this author).
References
1. Campbell, Al (2022) Moving Beyond Capitalism: Human Development and Protagonistic Planned Socialism. Science & Society, 86(2), forthcoming.
2. Campbell, Al (2006) Competition, Conscious Collective Cooperation and Capabilities: The Political Economy of Socialism and the Transition. Critique, 34(2), 105-126.
3. Cockshott, W. Paul and Alain Cottrell (1993) Towards a New Socialism. Nottingham: Spokesman.
4. Devine, Pat (1988) Democracy and Economic Planning. Cambridge: Polity Press.
5. Estrin, Saul and Peter Holmes (1983) French Planning in Theory and Practice. London: George Allen & Unwin.
6. Freire, Paulo (1910) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Reprint New York: Continuum, 1992.
1. Guevara, Che (1964) Sobre el Sistema presupuestario de financiamiento. Nuestra Industria. Revista Económico 2(5). Reprinted in Ernesto Che Guevara. Temas Económicos. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1988, 299-324.
8. Marx, Karl (1815) Critique of the Gotha Programme. Reprinted in Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works, Vol. 24. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1989, 15-99.
7 This allows for "local decisions" on "local issues". To require all social issues be decided by the entire society would neither be possible, nor would it correspond to our nature as collective species-beings, in which our different collective interests operate on different scales: local or small interest groups, regional or mid-sized interest groups, or all of society.
8 As well as some comments on a few issues concerning the second of these pillars, socialist democracy.
9. Marx, Karl (1867) Capital. Volume I. Reprinted in Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works, Vol. 35. New York: International Publishers, 1996.
10. Phillips, Leigh and Michael Rozworski (2019) The People's Republic of Walmart. London: Verso Press.
Эл Кэмпбелл9. Что такое социально-экономическое планирование? В ХХ в. при попытках построения посткапиталистического общества применялись методы экономического планирования материальных балансов, разработанные в СССР. Большинство сторонников выхода за рамки капитализма сошлись на том, что новое общество, к которому они все стремились, сможет функционировать только при использовании того или иного инструмента экономического планирования. Нынешняя всесторонняя переоценка построения посткапиталистического общества, ориентированного на человека, отчасти связана с переосмыслением того, как именно данное общество осуществляет социально-экономическое планирование, необходимое для всех систем производства, руководствуясь своими целями. В этой краткой работе рассматривается ряд заблуждений и мифов, связанных с отождествлением планирования при социализме с системой планирования материальных балансов. Затем в связи с реальными экспериментами, проводимыми в настоящее время в нескольких странах мира, будет рассмотрен вопрос о том, может ли требуемое социально-экономическое планирование осуществляться посредством сознательного управления рынком в странах, которые пытаются построить социализм, использующий рынки как для необходимого соединения всех звеньев многочисленных производственных цепочек, так и для распределения товаров широкого потребления.
Ключевые слова: экономическое планирование, социалистическое планирование, социализм, посткапиталистический.
9 Эл Кэмпбелл, почётный профессор экономики Университета Юты, сопредседатель Международной инициативы по продвижению политической экономии.
