Science, Technology and Society

Our Science, Technology and Society list publishes books that examine the social, political and economic implications of developments in science and technology.

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Science, Technology and Society

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The chapter takes a systematic approach to contribute to the ongoing debate on a democratically planned economy. It begins by examining prerequisites and basic problems, in discussing the historical experience of central planning and debates on socialist economic calculation, distilling challenges of information and incentives. The study argues that proposals for more ‘parametric’ planning combined with substantial local enterprise autonomy, integrated into a ‘cybernetic’ planning system, are well-suited to address these challenges, aided by advancements in information technology. The chapter then explores issues of socialist accounting, pricing, and the potential of modern environmental accounting techniques for a planned economy. It investigates socialist efforts in incentive design and enterprise performance indices. Then, various models of democratically planned economies are assessed, revealing problems in central planning models and neoclassical/libertarian models. The chapter proposes that the modern reform socialist approach offers a promising path forward, but can be enriched further.

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Between 1988 and 1993, three models of democratic economic planning were designed by Pat Devine (joined later by Fikret Adaman), Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, and Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell. At the beginning of the 2000s, David Laibman added a fourth model. These four models are called negotiated coordination, participatory economics, computerized central planning, and multilevel iterative democratic coordination. They are still at the centre of the discussion about what a postcapitalist economy should look like. This chapter aims to give a short but clear presentation of their main institutions and their functioning. It also provides a diagram we hope can help to understand the authors’ proposals. A detailed glossary divided by models accompanies the presentation to make the argument more straightforward. We abstained from relaying or formulating any criticism of the models and only tried to present them as clearly as possible. To our knowledge, this is the first publication presenting the four models side by side in English.

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The destructive tendencies of the capitalist mode of production affect ecosystems as well as social relationships. Especially, it is exhausting for workers in care professions, family care workers and people with a high need for care to lead their lives adequately. An alternative to capitalism seems far away, but the chapter proposes a transformation strategy, Care Revolution, that simultaneously addresses immediate improvements for people in care relations and steps in the direction of a solidary society beyond capitalism. The central starting points of this transformation strategy are the reduction of gainful working hours, individual and collective security, the socialization of central economic sectors and the support of projects organized as commons. Ultimately, a solidary society, without wage labour and organized by the coordination of free contributions and free usage, is aimed at.

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This chapter maps the contours of a potential collectivist system – biocommunism, a communism emerging from the catastrophes capital inflicts throughout the bios, the realm of life itself – appearing in the midst of intensifying turmoil. After a summary of theoretical premises, it presents five elements of biocommunism: disaster relief; opening borders; expropriation of industries; rationing consumption; and labour mobilization, and then concludes by discussing this agenda in relation to planning and ‘counter-planning’.

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Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond
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Democratic planning allows us to effectively address the multiple crises of our time through cooperative modes of collective coordination. Given the destructive consequences of contemporary capitalism, such a structural alternative to market economies is needed more than ever.

This accessible work examines various approaches that theorise, practise and nurture a creative construction towards varieties of democratic planning. Drawing from current socio-economic and ecological movements, it explores what future non-capitalist democratic planning could look like.

Bringing together important voices in the ongoing debates from scholars to activists, this volume proposes an interdisciplinary and innovative approach to democratic planning in the 21st century and beyond.

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This chapter departs from the assumption that democratically planned alternatives not only need to replace the destructive anarchy of production (and, by extension, the world market), but also the anarchy of the interstate system, which is home to the endless accumulation of political power on a world scale. I will first conceptualize planning in capitalism and post-capitalism and situate the anarchy of public planning within it. From there I will argue that a trans- and international perspective basically poses two questions, which will be tackled in later sections of the chapter: How can single experiments of ‘democratic planning in one country’ survive until a counter-hegemonic bloc has emerged that is large enough to subvert the logic of capital at a world scale? And, once a lower stage of world post-capitalism has been achieved, how could democratic planning be extended to the world scale in order to achieve a democratic world order, North–South convergence and planetary sustainability? With these issues being largely unexplored in the literature on democratic planning, this chapter will mostly discuss questions that a more global perspective poses.

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This chapter discusses the role of AI technology in the democratic planning of a degrowth economy by way of an exploration of the Marxian concept of productive forces. It argues against a technological-deterministic understanding of the concept, and interprets productive forces as the totality of what humans are able to do. This definition stresses the centrality of potential, rather than a given technological state of the art. Such an emphasis on potential enables the systematic identification of the political and not merely technical nature of productive forces. The chapter finds that any assessment of the viability of those technologies relevant to a degrowth economy turns on the question of whether they may be transformed into forces of re/production, allowing for the reconciliation of production and reproduction.

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