A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, participatory or Soviet-type forms of economic planning. The level of centralization or decentralization in decision-making and participation depends on the specific type of planning mechanism employed.
Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, such as socialism or communism.
Participatory economics, often abbreviated Parecon, is an economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for allocation in society. In the system, the say in decision-making is proportional to the impact on a person or group of people. Participatory economics is a form of a socialist decentralized planned economy involving the collective ownership of the means of production. It is a proposed alternative to contemporary capitalism and centralized planning. This economic model is primarily associated with political theorist Michael Albert and economist Robin Hahnel, who describes participatory economics as an anarchist economic vision.
ZNetwork, formerly known as Z Communications, is a left-wing activist-oriented media group founded in 1986 by Michael Albert and Lydia Sargent. It is, in broad terms, ideologically libertarian socialist, anti-capitalist, and heavily influenced by participatory economics, although much of its content is focused on critical commentary of foreign affairs. Its publications include Z Magazine, ZNet, and Z Video. Since early November 2022, they have all been regrouped under the name ZNetwork.
South End Press was a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 in Boston's South End. It published books written by political activists, notably Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, bell hooks, Winona LaDuke, Manning Marable, Ward Churchill, Cherríe Moraga, Andrea Smith, Howard Zinn, Jeremy Brecher and Scott Tucker. South End Press closed in 2014.
Robin Eric Hahnel is an American economist and professor emeritus of economics at American University. He was a professor at American University for many years and traveled extensively advising on economic matters all over the world. He is best known for his work on participatory economics with Z Magazine editor Michael Albert.
G7 Welcoming Committee Records was a Canadian independent record label based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The label mostly released material by artists and speakers with a radical left-wing point of view.
David McNally is an activist and the NEH Cullen Distinguished Professor of History and Business at the University of Houston. He was a professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto, Ontario from 1983 to 2018, and was chair of the university's Department of Political Science for several years. He is the author of many books and scholarly articles and the winner of the 2012 Deutscher Memorial Award and the 2012 Paul Sweezy Award.
The Mondragon Bookstore & Coffeehouse was a political bookstore and vegan cafe located in The Old Market Autonomous Zone at 91 Albert Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The name comes from the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation and other organisations in the Basque town of Mondragón Spain that is known for its extensive network of worker's cooperatives.
The Albert Street Autonomous Zone, also known as A-Zone or the Old Market Autonomous Zone, was founded in 1995, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, by local activists Paul Burrows and Sandra Drosdowech, who also co-founded Winnipeg's Mondragon Bookstore.
Michael D. Yates is an economist and a labor educator, and editorial director of the socialist publishing house Monthly Review Press. He advocates a socialist view of economics.
The United Jewish People's Order is a secular socialist Jewish cultural, political and educational fraternal organization in Canada. The UJPO traces its history to the founding of the Jewish Labour League Mutual Benefit Society in 1926.
Prefigurative politics are the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the group. According to Carl Boggs, who coined the term, the desire is to embody "within the ongoing political practice of a movement [...] those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal". Besides this definition, Leach also gave light to the definition of the concept stating that the term "refers to a political orientation based on the premise that the ends a social movement achieves are fundamentally shaped by the means it employs, and that movement should therefore do their best to choose means that embody or prefigure the kind of society they want to bring about". Prefigurativism is the attempt to enact prefigurative politics.
The following is a list of terms specific to anarchists. Anarchism is a political and social movement which advocates voluntary association in opposition to authoritarianism and hierarchy.
Paula Sherman is a Canadian writer, activist and educator. She is of Omàmìwinini (Algonquin) heritage and a Family Head on Ka-Pishkawandemin, the traditional governing council for the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation. She is also a professor of Indigenous Studies at Trent University, in Peterborough, Ontario. Her recent book entitled Dishonour of the Crown: The Ontario Resource Regime in the Valley of the Kiji Sibi chronicles the Ardoch community's struggle to prevent uranium prospecting on their traditional lands and is published by Arbeiter Ring Publishing, Winnipeg, MB. She is also a contributor to Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence and Protection of Indigenous Nations, a collection of essays writing by emerging Indigenous activists and academics edited by Mississauga academic Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
Jaroslav Vaněk was a Czech American economist and professor emeritus of Cornell University known for his research on economics of participation and, in his earlier career, on the theory of international trade.
Kaie Kellough is a Canadian poet and novelist. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, raised in Calgary, Alberta, and in 1998 moved to Montreal, Quebec, where he lives.
A facilitation board is a proposed economic institution conceived by economists Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel which act in systems of economic democracy as agencies that facilitate information exchange and processing for collective consumption proposals and for large-scale investment projects, workers requests for changing places of employment, and individuals and families seeking to find membership in living units and neighborhoods, among other functions.
A workers' council, also called labor council, is a type of council in a workplace or a locality made up of workers or of temporary and instantly revocable delegates elected by the workers in a locality's workplaces. In such a system of political and economic organization, the workers themselves are able to exercise decision-making power. Furthermore, the workers within each council decide on what their agenda is and what their needs are. The council communist Antonie Pannekoek describes shop-committees and sectional assemblies as the basis for workers' management of the industrial system. A variation is a soldiers' council, where soldiers direct a mutiny. Workers and soldiers have also operated councils in conjunction. Workers' councils may in turn elect delegates to central committees, such as the Congress of Soviets.
Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-management is a defining characteristic of socialism, with proposals for self-management having appeared many times throughout the history of the socialist movement, advocated variously by democratic, libertarian and market socialists as well as anarchists and communists.
