Moving Beyond Capitalism: Human Development and Protagonistic Planned Socialism

Major transformations of existing social orders require a broad belief: it is possible to build a viable alternative that addresses the major problems of the existing society. Social discussions involving a multitude of “mid-level concrete” models, or “previsions,” of such a viable alternative combine with the existing social discontent to create such social beliefs. The broad concept of “socialism” designates an organization of society and its production that does not involve some group of people living off their appropriation of part of the production of the rest of society. This paper presents some of the elements of a prefigurative conceptualization called Protagonistic Planned Socialism, which belongs to the Democratic Planned Socialism family of models. Its central elements are protagonistic collective self-determination of the operation of all the institutions of society by its members, consciously socially planned social production, and social labor processes that support and promote human development.