Robin Hahnel's Economic Justice and Democracy presents a new economic system. This is a visionary replacement of our present market-based system involving money, competitive trading and profit. He calls his system participatory economics. The allocation of resources, human and physical, are determined by rational choice arrived democratically through consumer and producer councils. The allocation of rewards is determined by personal sacrifice as determined by social consensus. He states that "economic visionaries had failed to provide a coherent model explaining precisely how their alternative to capitalism could work." This 420 page book reworks our conceptions on how to manage our lives. The "house rules," the etymological base for the word "economics", are totally reconsidered. Asking "What Do We Want?" he responds, "Do we want economic decisions to be determined by competition between groups pitted against one another for their well-being and survival. Or do we want workers and consumers to be able to plan their joint endeavors democratically, efficiently, and equitably? In other words, do we want to abdicate economic decision-making to the marketplace or do we want to embrace the possibility of participatory planning?"
Presently about 500 billionaires own more property than half of humanity.
In the U.S.A. wealth is very polarized as the top one percent own more than the bottom 91%. The problems of inequality seem to be increasing as other environmental problems accelerate. Maybe there is a better way to arrange the "house rules". It is refreshing to entertain a new concept for self-governance and hear it passionately argued.
His book evaluates competing notions of social justice and delves into the complexities of reward. He is critical of capitalism, socialism and communism and tries to explain their historical performance. Interesting is his discussion of the Mandragon movement in 1930s Spain. He presents as well current reform efforts --- labor and environmental and consumer and anticorporate movements --- to ameliorate capitalism's injustices and presents experimentation in equitable cooperation --- worker ownership, consumer and producer cooperatives, participatory budgeting in Kerala, India, Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Argentina.
"After carefully considering competing notions, this book concludes that economic justice should be defined as reward commensurate with sacrifice, and economic democracy should be defined as decision-making power in proportion to the degree affected."
"If I had a nickel from every person who told me how much they liked the idea, but could not imagine any way to get there from where we are today, I would already be retired. . . . I assure them I am dead serious. . . I believe the transition will be a long one, marked more by reform victories than by capitalist breakdowns. I believe overcoming commercial values will take time, but growing awareness of the consequences of relying on competition and greed and the advantages of equitable cooperation will prove decisive."
Published in 2005 by Routledge.