Democratic Socialist Planning

This chapter summarizes Marx’s vision of a socialist/Communist society, sets out the defining characteristics of democracy and planning, and assesses the historical experience of the Soviet Union’s model of centralized command planning, the Yugoslav model of self-managed market socialism, and the Latin American attempts at twenty-first century socialism. This is followed by an evaluation of the three principal contemporary theoretical models of a possible future socialist/Communist economy: market socialism; Parecon, a version of electronic socialism; and the author’s own model of democratic planning through social ownership and negotiated coordination. The chapter ends with an exposition of the model of democratic planning, responses to criticisms, and a summarizing conclusion.