The alternative to capitalist crisis
An Economy under Common Ownership and Democratic Control
There is an alternative to the speculation of the money markets and the booms and slumps of a capitalist economy. It is an economy owned by the people, run by the people, for the benefit of the people.
Instead of hundreds of types of different goods being produced without any idea if anybody wants them or if they will serve any useful purpose, the consumers and producers and the locally communities will democratically decide what is needed by society. We live in a world of limited and declining resources and it is only rational to plan what should be produced and what needs should be met by these goods.
It would mean that the major components of the economy would be taken into common ownership. Industries and services would be run by the people who work in them with democratically elected management boards. It would require a new style of revolutionary democracy based on mass participation, with people discussing and voting on proposals. All shades of opinion would be able to be represented and allowed to put their plans and proposals to a network of local, regional and national assemblies.
Planning and its implementation would take place at the level of society most appropriate to the plans themselves.
This type of participative, decision making, pluralist socialist democracy is a million miles away from the Soviet bureaucratic command style economic planning that took place in the former so called “socialist” countries.
A vibrant planned economy decided on by a mass participatory socialist democracy is the only rational alternative to capitalism’s four horseman of death - slumps, war, climate disaster and poverty - for the billions in the poor South. It is an alternative that the Scottish Socialist Party is campaigning and fighting for.