👉The table of contents so far is here.
Chapter 16: Economic Transition Plan I: Transition Period
The first hurdle in the transition period of the economic transition plan is the integration of key industries. In a sustainable planned economy, key industries are those sectors that fall within the scope of the planned economy.
While the definition of a key industry depends on the industrial classification, as mentioned in that section, in a sustainable planned economy whose primary objective is to ensure environmental sustainability, key industries refer to industrial sectors with a significant environmental impact.
Specifically, this will include industries such as steel, electricity, oil, shipbuilding, and machinery, as well as transportation, communications, and automobiles—industries that, even under the capitalist economic system, form the backbone of the economy as large corporations. The pharmaceutical sector, which operates on a separate production plan, also falls into this category.
These industrial sectors will be integrated into production business organizations as socially owned enterprises in the final stage of the sustainable planned economy. The aim of the integration of key industries during the transition period is to establish merged corporations that will serve as the precursors to these future production business organizations.
It must be acknowledged here that the integration of key industries is a completely different process from "nationalization" through the forced seizure of private companies, a common practice in socialist economic policies.
A sustainable planned economy does not presuppose the state as a political entity (as I have written), so "nationalization" is simply impossible. Rather, it means integrating key industrial entities, which often exist in the form of joint-stock companies under a capitalist economic system, into a single company for each industry.
In this respect, under today's capitalist economic system, competing companies in each industry form some kind of industry association and act in a cooperative manner.
However, these industry associations do not cooperatively develop production activities themselves, but rather, in many cases, function as a kind of pressure group that lobbies the political world to protect the interests of the entire industry, and are often vested interest groups that become breeding grounds for corruption.
In contrast, the merged enterprises that will form the predecessors of future production business organizations are cooperative joint companies aimed at developing production activities collaboratively, and will form trusts that are prohibited under antitrust laws under capitalism. Therefore, in order to legalize these precursor-type merged corporations, it will be necessary to amend the existing Antimonopoly Act.
The legal status of a merged corporation at its inception is not that of a joint-stock company, but rather a special transitional company. Therefore, its internal structure will also include internal organs such as a management committee and a workers' representative committee, similar to those of a future production business organization.
It is also important to note that this corporate integration process is carried out mandatorily based on law, and is entirely different from corporate mergers that are carried out based on voluntary agreements (contracts) between individual companies.
👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.
