Towards a New Socialism: Contents

Introduction

• Why is social democracy inadequate?
• In what sense was the USSR socialist?
• What can be learnt from the failure of Soviet socialism?
• What is the theoretical basis for a new socialism?
• Synopsis of the book

chapter 1: Inequality

• Sources of inequality
  • Exploitation
  • Unemployment
  • Infirmity and old age
  • Women's economic subordination
• Summary

chapter 2: Eliminating Inequalities

• Benefits of income redistribution
  • How much would one hour's labour produce?
  • Equality more effective than growth
• Inequalities of labour
  • Differential payment for education/skill?
  • Specific labour shortages
  • Differential payment for `personal qualities'?
• Skilled labour as a `produced input'
• Comparison with historically existing socialism
• Appendix: skilled labour multiplier

chapter 3: Work, Time and Computers

• Economies of time
• Objective social accounting
• Defining labour content
• The problem of scale
  • The idea of complexity
  • Simplifying the labour value problem
• High tech and intermediate tech solutions

chapter 4: Basic Concepts of Planning

• Planning and control
• Capitalist goals second order
• What would be first-order goals?
• Levels of planning

chapter 5: Strategic Planning

• Planning the industrial structure
• The environment and natural resources
• The time dimension of production
• Market and non-market distribution
  • Rights of citizenship
  • Freedom of choice
  • Coping with scarcity
  • Costs of metering
• Agriculture

chapter 6: Detailed Planning

• Planning in the USSR
• Detail planning and stock constraints
• A new plan-balancing algorithm
  • The harmony function
  • Stages of the algorithm
• Economic cybernetics in Chile

chapter 7: Macroeconomic Planning

• Macro accounting in labour-time
• Household saving and credit
  • Interest on savings?
• Tax policy
  • Ground rent
  • Excise tax
  • Taxation and Accumulation

chapter 8: The Marketing of Consumer Goods

• Market-clearing prices
• Consumer goods and the macro plan
• Comparison with capitalist markets
• Conclusion

chapter 9: Planning and Information

• Information and property
• Requirements of a statistical service
  • Product coding
  • Unified stock control
  • Standardised message formats
  • Obtaining technical coefficients
• Information: social problems
  • Information, performance measures and incentives
  • Evaluating the performance of enterprises
  • Statistical assessment for producer goods enterprises
  • Against monopoly
• Rewards and sanctions?

chapter 10: Foreign Trade

• Technology and trade patterns
• Low wage and high wage economies
• Advantages of trade deficits
• International trade in context of socialism
  • State demand for foreign currency
  • Alternatives to foreign exchange
• Exchange rates, tourism and black markets
• Policy instruments
  • Unsold Exports
  • Improved terms of trade

chapter 11: Trade Between Socialist Countries

• Trade and property
• Less developed countries
• What we advocate
• Significance of national sovereignty

chapter 12: The Commune

• The activities of urban communes
  • Housing
  • Food preparation
  • Childcare
  • Some leisure activities
  • Helping senior citizens
• Basic rationale in terms of efficiency
• Systems of payment and external trade
• Distribution of tasks
• The legal status of communes
• Public policy

chapter 13: On Democracy

• Democracy and parliamentarism
• Direct democracy or soviet democracy?
  • Institutions of classical democracy
  • `Democratic centralism'---a dead end
• Is democracy possible today?
• Democracy and planning
• The acephalous state

chapter 14: Property Relations

• Who owns what?
• Encoding property rights
• What can be owned?
  • Pure capitalism and mixed capitalism
  • The Soviet model
  • The enterprise as focus of contradictions
• The proposed communalist model
  • Individual property rights
  • Rights of Planning and economic projects
  • Self-employment
  • Property in land
• Digression on the Ricardian theory of rent
• Ownership of natural resources
• Separation of control from benefit

chapter 15: Some Contrary Views Considered

• Distribution, values and prices
• Market socialism?
  • Diane Elson: the socialised market?
  • Aganbegyan: administrative and economic methods

References

[other information on the book]