New ways to organize the economy? The solution, planning, is already there but serving capital.

“On the Barricades” s05e02

In this second instalment of this week's release of “On the Barricades,” hosts Boyan Stanislavski and Maria Cernat continue to overview some interesting research and theoretical literature to address the successes and viability of the planned economy. This is an analysis hugely ignored or poorly-understood even by leftists who seek to organize and build socialism. The capitalist ideologues and the propaganda machine do a fine job of offering superficial ways out of the crisis and fake solutions to inequality and poverty. These absorb, more intimately, our lives into the profit-making system – such as the advice to stand up straight and look into the mirror before a meeting to boost some hormone or another. Or, the idea that economic planning doesn’t work, whilst reinforcing the status quo that is in fact based on sophisticated economic planning!

Boyan and Maria refer to the books: “The People’s Republic of Walmart,” by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworsk,; and “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” by Anand Giridharadas.