Saturday, December 28, 2024

Chapter 6.2.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

Chapter 6: Planned economy and political system


6.2. Political and economic bicameral system

In the relationship between planned economy and political system, the nature of the representative system becomes an issue. In this regard, in an administrative command-type planned economy like the former Soviet Union, economic planning was the task of administrative agencies, so a planning administrative agency like the former Soviet Union's State Planning Commission is sufficient, and the issue of representative system is not very important.

The issue of democratic supervision arises as to how a representative body can supervise such an administrative agency with great authority, but this is a question of administrative supervision rather than the representative system itself.

In a new planned economy centered on the autonomous joint planning of enterprises, however, the system and composition of the representative body that formulates such joint plans become important issues.

The most radical system would be to unify them into a single representative body for enterprises. For example, a representative body composed of delegates for each industry. This is a structure close to a functional representative system.

In particular, Marx's theory of communist society, based on the definition of "a society consisting of cooperatives of free and equal producers acting consciously according to a rational joint plan," would lead to a system in which production cooperatives (business entities) themselves have their own representative bodies.

According to Marx, in a communist society, (1) there would be no governing function, (2) the allocation of general functions would be a practical matter that would not result in any control, and (3) elections would lose their current political character. And under communist collective ownership, the so-called will of the people would disappear, giving way to the practical will of the cooperatives. The image is a system in which cooperatives would join together and govern directly.

However, since economic planning alone requires a great deal of deliberation and coordination, it would be more reasonable to set up a separate representative body to share the functions of deliberating other general policies. In that sense, it would be better for the economic planning body to be established and operated as a corporate representative body separate from the general representative body, and for the general representative body to only give approval to the economic plan formulated by the economic planning body.

This dual representative body of planning (economy)/general (politics) - a political and economic bicameral - would be established as a set at the level of the zones that make up the World Commonwealth However, even though it is a political and economic bicameral system, the relationship between the two will not be completely equal, and the Commons' Convention, which is the political house, will have a senate-like position, so to speak, and will hold the final power to approve plans.

The bicameral structure will not apply to economic planning body at the World Commonwealth level (World Economic Planning Organization), and it will be positioned more as one of the bodies directly under the General Assembly of the World Commonwealth (World Commons' Convention). This is because, in the case of the World Commonwealth, political integration is emphasized. However, even in this case, the World Economic Planning Organization will not be a bureaucratic body, but a deliberative body made up of the world federation of production organizations.

Furthermore, the Grand-Zones, which are wide regional entities within the World Commonwealth, will not have their own economic planning bodies, as their main task will be interregional economic cooperation within the framework of the world economic plan, rather than economic planning itself.

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Chapter 6.1.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

Chapter 6: Planned Economy and Political Systems


6.1. Economic Systems and Political Systems

The task of the part II of this series is to clarify the process of a sustainable planned economy, and in this chapter we will look at the political institutions that guarantee the planned economy system in the superstructure.

In general, it is not clear that there is a logically necessary relationship between economic systems and political systems. However, it is possible to find a loose, but logical, correspondence.

For example, because capitalism aims for a free economy, it is most effective when combined with a liberal political system that keeps economic regulations to a minimum, especially a parliamentary system. This is because the parliamentary system is a representative system of money politics in which large sums of money are spent on elections for public office, making it easy for capital to establish a patronage relationship in which it retains the total interest of the business community through the political parties and politicians who serve as its guarantors.

On the other hand, a socialist economic system based on an administrative command economy like that of the former Soviet Union naturally requires a government and a planned administrative agency to act as the economic command center, and is therefore linked to a fairly centralized state system. In this respect, a parliamentary system, which is a meeting point of various political parties, is difficult to fit into this system.

In contrast, the new planned economy is not an administrative command type, but is based on autonomous joint planning by the target corporations of the planned economy themselves, making planned administrative agencies unnecessary. From this point on, one issue is whether the institution of the state itself should also be unnecessary.

The key here is the abolition of the monetary system. If a state that has lost its currency authority to issue official currency is no longer a state, then a communist planned economy that is not based on a monetary economy will be incompatible with the state system.

However, the abolition of the state is not necessarily unique to planned economies, and if one takes the most radical approach to free market economics, which retains the monetary economy but abolishes the state's currency authority and purifies it into a private currency system, then at least in theory, "capitalism without the state" will be possible.

In reality, however, it is difficult to imagine that a private currency without any state authority could circulate steadily with the safety of transactions guaranteed, so "capitalism without a state" will likely remain nothing more than an armchair theory.

Ultimately, an autonomous planned economic system without a planned administrative agency will have a new political system that is not based on a state system as its superstructure, and the World Commonwealth will be the global framework for this.


👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.

Chapter 6.3.

👉The table of contents so far is  here . Chapter 6: Planned economy and political system 6.3. The role of the World Commonwealth We argued ...