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Who or what institution, except at the centre, can
consider the needs of the whole society? What local authority or committee
could do so, when it could only have knowledge and responsibility for
its own locality? How could the production unit know for whom to produce,
what to produce, when to supply it, how it is to obtain its inputs (and
from where) unless the planners decide and inform?
-Alec Nove
Having seen
how participatory planning works from the perspective of individual
production and consumption units, we now address the planning procedure
as a whole.
Developing Initial Data
In earlier chapters
we assumed long-run projects were decided before annual planning, and
that at the outset of the yearly planning process each economic actor
had access to important information. How is this accomplished?
Long-Run Plans
Should society
make a qualitative change in coal mining that drastically improves health
and safety, update existing steel plants, build anew high-speed rail
line, or transform agriculture to conform to ecological norms? All may
be desirable, but presumably given limited resources, not all can be
done at the same time. That is the meaning of long-term investment choice
and is the problem it -3oses. Which projects are worth doing and which
are not? What order should they be done in? And how fast should we tackle
the list, which is to say, how much present consumption are we willing
to sacrifice for future benefit?
Long- and short-run
investment projects differ in regard to how many years' resources must
be committed for the project to reach fruition. Large- and small-scale
investment projects differ regarding the magnitude of commitments and
the breadth of efforts required. One approach to long-run planning would
be to handle this issue before yearly planning begins. At this time,
all previously agreed-to long-run projects could be reviewed and updated
so that the commitment of resources necessary for this year could become
part of subsequent planning calculations. After national projects, large
regions could settle on their new long-run projects, and so on, down
to the smallest units. In each case, alternative proposals could be
aired, preferences expressed, implications assessed, new alternatives
broached, options eliminated and improved, and final decisions made,
all by participatory procedures similar to those described in our discussion
of county-wide planning in chapter 8.
A procedure
that could shorten the process would be to first decide the proportion
of economic resources we want to commit to investment. Debate about
options could then be made knowing roughly how much productive resources
were available. Formulation, presentation, and modification of long-run
investment options could be made and updated by the investment facilitation
boards, who could base their proposals on polls and submissions from
units, as outlined in the county example in chapter 8.
It is important
to recognize the advantages of collective, participatory, investment
planning. In capitalist or market coordinator economies each unit assesses
potential investments according to norms imposed by the market and class
system. In the workplace, the decision to switch from one technology
to another is made by assessing likely profit/loss and capital/labor
or coordinator/labor bargaining implications. But this is most definitely
not deciding on the basis of social cost and social benefit. Only the
benefit of the owner and stockholders is accounted for. Moreover, investment
decisions in market economies are not even planned in coordination with
one another. For example, the steel plant that decides not to introduce
new technology because it appears unprofitable might have decided differently
were they able to foresee how innovations in other industries would
dramatically alter the cost of inputs or demand for steel.
In participatory
planning, on the other hand, coordinated planning in light of social
costs and benefits is possible. Each potential investment stands or
falls not because of contemporary relationships alone, but because of
conditions most likely to prevail once all innovations come on line.
Whatever criteria society adopts to determine whether to enact particular
investments, the participatory planning system will produce a more accurate
assessment of social costs and benefits than would capitalist or coordinator
systems. In addition, in a participatory system judgments will emphasize
the impact of choices on the whole economy's productivity and social
elations from the point of view of improving the quality of life of
all workers and consumers, rather than just the circumstances of elite
classes.
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