2. Participatory Planning for Allocation
A second question that any viable economic program must have an answer for is:
How are our scarce resources, and especially our precious and limited human time, to be allocated to the production of goods and services? What is the method of allocation?
First of all, I’ll note that scarcity is in fact an inevitable part of the human condition. There are only 24 hours in the day, the laws of physics prevent each of us from being in two places at the same time. If we spend time building houses or making shoes, we cannot also spend that time doing something else.
No economic system will be viable if it is wantonly wasteful in its use of scarce resources, if it does the equivalent of having people dig holes and fill them in again. For one thing, one of things we would like to have from the emancipation of the working class from oppression is a reduction in the time spent in required work making things for each other. We can’t achieve that if we have a system that is wasteful of our work time.
When I say this, I am not saying that for Participatory Economics efficiency or avoidance of waste is the primary value. On the contrary, the primary values for Participatory Economics are putting an end to class oppression and other forms of oppression, ensuring that the working class does not end up under the thumb of a new techno-managerial ruling class as it has in all “Communist” revolutions, and generating an economic structure that supports human solidarity rather than a narrow competitive struggle for advantage over others, and which respects the diversity of human subcultures and individuals.
There is a sub-part that will be covered next. The Professor is open to all questions, please, feel free to jump in at anytime.
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