The model of the “Participatory Economy,” developed by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel over the last 30 years, has attracted attention as a serious answer to “TINA” - “There Is No Alternative” (to capitalism) - and as a conception of socialism that claims superiority over proposals for central planning, “market socialism,” and “negotiated coordination.” The 2012 publication of Hahnel's Of the People, By the People: The Case for a Participatory Economy provides an opportunity to examine this conception critically and systematically. Despite its many insights and contributions, the Albert-Hahnel model suffers from two crucial problems: its commitment to an abstractly speculative approach to the design of social institutions, and a limiting fear of authority and hierarchy that has clear roots in classical anarchist thinking. This latter feature results in a model with an uncanny resemblance to Walrasian competitive market equilibrium - despite its progenitors’ programmatic denial of this connection.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AlbertMichael, and RobinHahnel. 1981. Socialism: Today and Tomorrow. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press.
2.
AlbertMichael. 1991a. Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty First Century. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press.
3.
AlbertMichael. 1991b. The Political Economy of Participatory Economics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
AlperowitzGar. 2013b. What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green.
10.
Arrow, Kenneth J. and Gérard Debreu. 1954. “Existence of a Competitive Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy.” Econometrica, 22:3, 265–90.
11.
BrodyAndras. 1970. Proportions, Prices and Planning: A Mathematical Restatement of the Labor Theory of Value. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado; Chicago, Illinois: American Elsevier.
12.
CampbellDonald. 1995. Incentives: Motivation and the Economics of Information. New York: Cambridge University Press.
13.
DevinePat. 1988. Democracy and Economic Planning: The Political Economy of a Self-Governing Society. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
HahnelRobin. 2012b. Of the People, By the People: The Case for a Participatory Economy. Oakland, California: Soapbox Press (distributed by AK Press).
21.
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1945. “The Price System as a Mechanism for Using Knowledge.” American Economic Review, XXXV:4 (September), 519–530.
22.
LaibmanDavid. 1992a. “Market and Plan: The Evolution of Socialist Social Structures in History and Theory.” Science & Society, 56:1 (Spring), 60–91.
23.
LaibmanDavid. 1992b. Value, Technical Change and Crisis: Explorations in Marxist Economic Theory. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe.
24.
LaibmanDavid. 2001. “Contours of the Maturing Socialist Economy.” Historical Materialism, 9, 85–110.
25.
LaibmanDavid. 2002. “Democratic Coordination: Towards a Working Socialism for the New Century.” Science & Society, 66:1 (Spring), 116–129.
26.
LaibmanDavid. 2006. “The Future Within the Present: Seven Theses for a Robust Twenty-First Century Socialism.” The 2005 David M. Gordon Memorial Lecture. Review of Radical Political Economics, 38:3 (Summer), 305–318.
27.
LaibmanDavid. 2007. Deep History: A Study in Social Evolution and Human Potential. Albany, New York: SUNY Press.
28.
LaibmanDavid. 2009. “The Western Left, the Soviet Union and Marxism.” Science & Society, 73:4 (October), 540–553.
