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.

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 5.5.

Chapter 5: Globalization of Planned Economy

5.5. The Council for Grand-Zonal Economic Cooperation

Since the World Commonwealth is not an integrated entity like a single nation state, world economic planning encompasses economic coordination among the five Grand-Zones, which are the regional groupings of the Zones that constitute the World Commonwealth. Such Grand-Zonal economic cooperation is extremely important in a sustainable planned economy as an alternative to capitalist commercial trade.

In essence, a sustainable planned economy is a global economic system based on a world economic plan, in which individual Zonal planned economies and cross-Zonal economic cooperation are organically interrelated.

In that sense, Grand-Zones are important units as economic cooperation spheres, and a working organization such as the Council for Grand-Zonal Economic Cooperation must be established, separate from the World Economic Planning Organization, to handle such inter-Zonal economic cooperation and maintain constant economic cooperation relationships.

To give a specific example, in the case of automobiles, the central Zone within each Grand-Zone produces them according to the guidelines set out in the world economic plan, and they are shared within the Grand-Zone. As a result, automobile manufacturers will no longer compete with each other for global market share, and production activities will be completed within each Grand-Zone.

However, this is not a rigid rule, and in places like Africa where there are no independent automobile manufacturers - although of course the possibility of developing independent manufacturers is greater than under a capitalist economy - the existence of cooperative relationships beyond Grand-Zonal boundaries, such as sourcing from neighboring Europe, is not denied.

Another important role of the Grand-Zones will be economic cooperation in the field of food and agriculture. Communist food production is based on each Zone being self-sufficient, without relying on trade, and in reality communism makes this possible, but the state of agricultural development and production volume are also affected by geographical conditions and weather, and imbalances cannot be completely avoided, so cooperative relationships in which  Grand-Zones that share a common food culture can share scarce products are essential.

The World Food and Agriculture Organization will be established as a specialized agency to coordinate such cooperative relationships globally. This will take over the work of the current UN agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), but this agency will remain a coordinating body, and the actual practical aspects of cooperation will be carried out by Food and Agriculture Councils established in each Grand-Zone.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

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

Chapter 5.4.

Chapter 5: Globalization of Planned Economy

5.4. The World Economic Planning Organization

The practical organization for the global planned economy is the World Economic Planning Organization. This organization is equivalent to the headquarters of the Economic Planning Conferences, which are the planning organizations for each Zone of the World Commonwealth. When the global planned economy is finally established, it will be a systematic organization in which the economic plans of each Zone are formulated within the overall framework of the world economic plan formulated by this organization.

This World Economic Planning Organization is positioned as a subsidiary organ of the World Commonwealth, but it is not a bureaucratic administrative organization like the current UN organizations, but a deliberative organization that formulates joint plans for production enterprises themselves, just like the Economic Planning Conference of each Zone. 

Its structure is also similar to the Economic Planning Conferences of each Zone. In other words, the executive body (The Senior Board of Directors) that is responsible for the decision-making of the World Economic Planning Organization is mainly composed of representatives of the production business associations, which is the global associations of production business organizations in the environmentally burdensome industrial sector that is the target of the planned economy.

There is no organization equivalent to a production business association in a capitalist economy, but if we were to cite existing analogues, we could imagine international industry associations such as the World Steel Association or the Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d'Automobiles, etc.

Under a capitalist system, such international industry associations are merely organizations representing the international interests of each industry, and coordinating production activities themselves would be considered an international cartel and would be prohibited. However, in a global planned economy, production business associations are not simply industry associations, but is truly the leading organization of the global planned economy.

The world economic plan that the production business associations formulate after deliberation through the World Economic Planning Organization must then be deliberated at the General Assembly of the World Commonwealth (the World Commons' Convention), the representative and decision-making body of the people of the World Commonwealth. As a result, the adopted world economic plan binds each Zone with normativeness equivalent to a treaty and becomes the standard guideline for economic planning at the Zonal level.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

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

Chapter 5.3.

Chapter 5: Globalization of Planned Economy

5.3. From trade to economic cooperation

When a global sustainable planned economy is realized, the biggest change that will occur in the world economy will be the disappearance of the economic activity known as trade, whether it is "free trade" or "protectionist trade." This is in a parallel relationship with the disappearance of commerce at the "single country" level. This is a natural fact, given that trade means commercial activity that crosses the borders of sea and land.

However, even if trade disappears, it does not mean that there will be a shift to a completely self-sufficient system at the "single country" level. The overseas procurement of goods that are difficult to produce in one's own country, including food, will continue. However, this will no longer be done in the commercial form of trade, but in the form of free economic cooperation.

It is important to note that the economic cooperation referred to here is not a donating economic act implemented as "assistance" to "developing countries" as in the case of economic cooperation under capitalist economies, but rather is, in principle, an everyday reciprocal economic act.

An imperfect precedent for such an attempt was the economic cooperation system (COMECON) of the socialist economic bloc centered on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but this adopted a uniform division of labor system, which led to bias in the industrial structure of the member countries. Economic cooperation in a sustainable planned economy is flexible inter-regional cooperation that does not rely on such a uniform division of labor.

In fact, the world economic plan mentioned in the previous section is itself a general guideline for economic cooperation, but concrete economic cooperation is carried out at the level of neighboring economic cooperation bloc, taking into account geographical proximity. As will be discussed again in the next chapter, the Great-Zone bloc that divides the world into five functions as an economic cooperation bloc. 

Among this economic cooperation, food is directly linked to human life and death and is heavily dependent on natural conditions, so it is necessary to draw up a plan for it separately from regular economic plans, but actual economic cooperation will still be carried out on the Great-Zonal level.

Furthermore, as part of economic cooperation, there is the issue of transnational management of natural resources that serve as energy sources. As discussed in my On Communism, natural resources will not be left to nationalism, but will be placed under transnational management as unowned property that belongs to no one, with a World Natural Resources Organization being set up as the management body, and sustainable joint mining will be carried out. The world economic plan will also encompass a plan for the distribution of these resources.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

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

Chapter 5.2.

Chapter 5: Globalization of Planned Economy

5.2. Global Planned Economy

In Part 1, we discussed the theoretical foundations of a new planned economy that places emphasis on environmental sustainability, that is, a sustainable planned economy. For the time being, the discussion there has assumed a planned economy at the level of a single country.

However, since environmental sustainability means, strictly speaking, the sustainability of the global environment - in other words, preserving the Earth so that it is not destroyed by human factors - a sustainable planned economy cannot be practiced in only one particular country.

In its ultimate form, a sustainable planned economy must be processed on a global scale. In this respect, it aims for a more thorough globalization than the "environmental policy theory" that trivializes environmental sustainability to a national policy issue, nor the recent trend of trying to coordinate specific environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity through individual international treaties, with ratification or withdrawal left to the discretion of each country.

To achieve this, a world economic plan that will serve as a global standard for a sustainable planned economy is needed. This will be the overall framework (cap) for economic planning at the "national" level, which has been the premise of the discussion up to the previous chapter. In other words, planning at the "national" level will be positioned as an individual allocation (quota) based on the global economic plan.

Any "realist" will question such a grandiose concept, asking whether such a large-scale economic plan can be formulated effectively without dispute on the current Earth, which now has a population of several billion.

It is certainly a grand economic experiment that humanity has never experienced before. However, I believe that this can be achieved by abolishing the current system of sovereign states and creating the World Commonwealth to replace the current United Nations, which is merely a federation of sovereign states. 

The World Commonwealth is a transnational political and economic organization composed of non-sovereign Zones instead of sovereign states. In this sense, the relationship between a sustainable planned economy and a political system is an important issue, which will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

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

Chapter 5.1.

Part II: THE PROCESS OF SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC PLANNING

Chapter 5: Globalization of Planned Economy

5.1. Non-bureaucratic planning

A sustainable planned economy is different from the Soviet-style planned economy not only in terms of its perspective, but also in terms of its process. That is, it follows a process of independent joint planning by the production enterprises themselves, rather than administratively led bureaucratic planning as in the Soviet-style.

In that respect, it is similar to the system of the former Yugoslavia, which was called "self-managed socialism." However, in the case of the former Yugoslavia, the emphasis was on "autonomous management," in which the workers themselves managed and operated each production enterprise, and overall planning was only of secondary interest, which in effect brought about a certain degree of competitiveness with the independent accounting of individual production enterprises, indicating a move closer to a market economy.

In contrast, the autonomous joint planning envisaged in a sustainable planned economy places emphasis on "joint management," in which the production enterprises jointly formulate and implement the overall plan.

The formulation body for such joint plans by production enterprises is envisaged to be a representative body such as the "Economic Planning Conference" (hereafter abbreviated as the Planning Conference), which is made up of planners from each production enterprise.

Since the plan will be based on environmental sustainability, the Planning Conference will have the advanced function of environmental economic analysis necessary for economic planning, and will take the lead in formulating the plan. Therefore, this institution will not have bureaucrats like administrative agencies, but instead will have ecological economists as full-time employees.

An ecological economist is a specialist who performs economic analysis and predictions from an environmental perspective, a new profession that can only come into existence when economics and environmental studies are combined. In other words, an ecologist + economist = an ecolonomist.

Even under a capitalist economy, a new field known as "environmental economics" has emerged, but it remains a peripheral area within capitalist economics, which is absolutely premised on a market economy. However, in a sustainable planned economy, environmental economics will become a key knowledge, and corresponding practical jobs will also be created.

This may raise concerns that ecolonomists will become quasi-bureaucratic figures who drive the Planning Conference, but their role is strictly limited to research and analysis that contributes to economic planning, and the actual formulation of plans is submitted to public discussion and passed at the Planning Conference's deliberations, so this body can be said to be closer to a parliament than to an administrative body like the State Planning Commission of the former Soviet Union.

Compared to Soviet-style state planning, such voluntary joint plans are expected to be much more realistic plans that reflect flexible and analytical knowledge based on judgments at the production site.

Furthermore, since a sustainable planned economy is based on the sustainability of the global environment, ultimately it will not be complete unless it is implemented on a global scale. Such a global economic plan must also be envisioned as a system in which each production sector's worldwide federations independently formulate and manage the plan.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

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