Reopening the debate on the Socialist economic planning

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to contribute to the discussion about the
socialist planning of the economy in the light of the current technique
possibilities. The starting point is to examine the debate’s current state about
the economic calculation in socialism. Based on the new results, favourable to
the economic calculation in a non-market economy, we propose a model of
socialist economy with two fundamental pillars: i) an economic accounting based
directly on the labor time as a calculation unit (without money), as
much for estimating costs as for paying the producers (with labor bonus
depending on the provided hours in their working day); ii) a planning mechanism
with a double control procedure: democratic decision of the general
goals of development and the main macromagnitudes of the economy, and a real-time revision of the plan through the distribution of consumer means depending on the consumer preferences (expressed in their purchasing decisions with labor bonus). The
article is completed with a description of general characteristics of the
iterative managerial coordination that corresponds to this model