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v t e

A decentralized-planned economy or decentrally-planned economy, occasionally called horizontally-planned economy due to its horizontalism, is a type of planned economy in which the investment and allocation of consumer and capital goods is explicated accordingly to an economy-wide plan built and operatively coordinated through a distributed network of disparate economic agents or even production units itself. Decentralized planning is usually held in contrast to centralized planning, in particular the Soviet Union's command economy, where economic information is aggregated and used to formulate a plan for production, investment and resource allocation by a single central authority. Decentralized planning can take shape both in the context of a mixed economy as well as in a post-capitalist economic system.

This form of economic planning implies some process of democratic and participatory decision-making within the economy and within firms itself in the form of industrial democracy. Computer-based forms of democratic economic planning and coordination between economic enterprises have also been proposed by various computer scientists and radical economists. Proponents present decentralized and participatory economic planning as an alternative to market socialism for a post-capitalist society.

Decentralized-planning has been proposed as a basis for socialism and has been variously advocated by democratic socialists, council communists and anarchists who advocate a non-market form of socialism, in total rejection of Soviet-type central economic planning.

Models

Negotiated coordination

Economist Pat Devine has created a model of decentralized economic planning called "negotiated coordination" which is based upon social ownership of the means of production by those affected by the use of the assets involved, with the allocation of consumer and capital goods made through a participatory form of decision-making by those at the most localized level of production. Moreover, organizations that utilize modularity in their production processes may distribute problem solving and decision making.

Participatory planning

The planning structure of a decentralized planned economy is generally based on a consumers council and producer council (or jointly, a distributive cooperative) which is sometimes called a consumers' cooperative. Producers and consumers, or their representatives, negotiate the quality and quantity of what is to be produced. This structure is central to participatory economics, guild socialism and economic theories related to anarchism.

In practice

Revolutionary Catalonia

Some decentralised participation in economic planning has been implemented across Revolutionary Spain, most notably in Catalonia, during the Spanish Revolution of 1936.

Kerala

Some decentralised participation in economic planning has been implemented in various regions and states in India, most notably in Kerala. Local level planning agencies assess the needs of people who are able to give their direct input through the Gram Sabhas (village-based institutions) and the planners subsequently seek to plan accordingly.

Similar concepts in practice

Community participatory planning

The United Nations has developed local projects that promote participatory planning on a community level. Members of communities take decisions regarding community development directly.

Political advocacy

Decentralized planning has been a feature of socialist and anarchist economics. Variations of decentralized planning include participatory economics, economic democracy and industrial democracy and have been promoted by various political groups, most notably libertarian socialists, guild socialists, libertarian Marxists, Trotskyists, anarchists and democratic socialists.

During the Spanish Revolution, some areas where anarchist and libertarian socialist influence through the CNT and UGT was extensive, particularly rural regions, were run on the basis of decentralized planning resembling the principles laid out by anarcho-syndicalist Diego Abad de Santillan in the book After the Revolution.

See also

• Adhocracy
• Anarchist Spain
• Cybernetics
• Distributed economy
• Economic democracy
• Economic planning
• Horizontalidad
• Libertarian socialism
• Inclusive democracy
• Indicative planning
• Industrial democracy
• Market abolitionism
• Participatory economics
• Social ownership
• Peer-to-peer economy
• Planned economy
• Project Cybersyn
• Production for use
• Resource-based economy
• Self-managed economy
• Socialist economics
• The Venus Project

Notes

1. Lange, Oskar (1979). "The Computer and the Market". Calculemus.org. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
2. Cottrell, Allin; Cockshott, W. Paul (1993). Towards a New Socialism. (Nottingham, England: Spokesman. Retrieved 17 March 2012.
3. Medina, Eden (2006). "Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile". J. Lat. Am. Stud. (38). Cambridge University Press: 571–606. doi:10.1017/S0022216X06001179.
4. Kotz, David (2008). "What Economic Structure for Socialism?" (PDF). Retrieved 12 September 2012.
5. Schweickart, David (2007). "Democratic Socialism". In Anderson, Gary L.; Herr, Kathryn G., eds. Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. SAGE Publications. p. 448. ISBN 9781452265650. Archived 17 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 6 August 2020. "Virtually all socialists have distanced themselves from the economic model long synonymous with socialism (i.e., the Soviet model of a nonmarket, centrally planned economy. Some have endorsed the concept of market socialism, a postcapitalist economy that retains market competition but socializes the means of production and, in some versions, extends democracy to the workplace. Some hold out for a nonmarket, participatory economy. All democratic socialists agree on the need for a democratic alternative to capitalism".
6. "Participatory Planning Through Negotiated Coordination" (PDF). 1 March 2002. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
7. Kostakis, Vasilis (2019). "How to Reap the Benefits of the 'Digital Revolution'? Modularity and the Commons". Halduskultuur: The Estonian Journal of Administrative Culture and Digital Governance. 20 (1): 4–19.
8. Wetzel, Tom. "Workers Power and the Spanish Revolution".
9. Dolgoff, Sam, ed. (1974). The Anarchist Collectives (1st ed.). Free Life Editions. p. 114. ISBN 9780914156024.
10. Writings, 1932–33 p. 96, Leon Trotsky.
11. "After the Revolution". Membres.multimania.fr. 7 January 1936. Archived from the original on 29 August 2012. Retrieved 12 September 2012.

Further reading

• Cox, Robin (2005). "The Economic Calculation Controversy: Unravelling of a Myth" (PDF).
• Damier, Vadim (2012). "The Economy of Freedom".
• Devine, Pat (2010). Democracy and Economic Planning. Polity. ISBN 978-0745634791.
• Mandel, Ernest (1986). In Defence of Socialist Planning. New Left Review (159).

v t e Anarchist communism
Concepts	Anarchy Anti-authoritarianism Anti-capitalism Anti-statism Class consciousness Class struggle Classless society Common ownership Common resources Commons Commune Consensus decision-making Co-operative economics Egalitarian community Free association "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" Give-away shop General strike Gift economy Market abolitionism Mutual aid Prefigurative politics Primitive communism Proletarian internationalism Stateless society Worker cooperative Workers' control Workers' council Wage slavery
People	Alexander Berkman Murray Bookchin Carlo Cafiero Emilio Covelli Joseph Déjacque Clarissa Dixon Buenaventura Durruti Sébastien Faure Iosif Bleikhman Luigi Galleani Emma Goldman Peter Kropotkin Ricardo Flores Magón Nestor Makhno Errico Malatesta Albert Meltzer Volin
Organizational forms	Insurrectionary anarchism Platformism Synthesis federations
Theoretical works	Anarchism and Other Essays The Conquest of Bread Fields, Factories, and Workshops Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution Now and After Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Related topics	Anarchism Autonomism Communization Council communism Left communism Libertarian socialism Social anarchism
Anarchism Communism Socialism

v t e Libertarian socialism
Schools of thought	Anarchism Collectivist anarchism Anarchist communism Anarcho-syndicalism Guild socialism Marxism Autonomism Chalieu-Montal Tendency Council communism Frankfurt School Freudo-Marxism Situationism Utopian socialism
Concepts	Anti-authoritarianism Anti-capitalism Class conflict Common ownership Decentralization Economic democracy Egalitarian community Free association Mutual aid Worker cooperative Workers' control Workers' self-management
Models	Communalism Decentralized planning Economic democracy Guild socialism Inclusive Democracy Market abolitionism Participatory economics Socialization
People	19th c. Charles Fourier Stephen Pearl Andrews Mikhail Bakunin Joseph Déjacque Thomas Hodgskin Peter Kropotkin Gustav Landauer Herbert Marcuse William Morris Antonie Pannekoek Francesc Pi i Maragall Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Wilhelm Reich Rudolf Rocker Otto Rühle 20th c. Michael Albert Murray Bookchin Cornelius Castoriadis Noam Chomsky G. D. H. Cole Takis Fotopoulos Paul Goodman Robin Hahnel Daniel Guérin Chris Pallis
Significant events	International Workingmen's Association Revolutions of 1917–1923 Spanish Revolution of 1936 New Left New social movements
Related	Communism Left-libertarianism Libertarianism Social democracy Socialism Syndicalism Critique of political economy