Of the People, by the People: The Case for a Participatory Economy by Robin Hahnel [Book review]

Abstract

Those disillusioned by ‘real socialisms’, whether market socialist or centrally planned, face the question of how we are to conceive of a feasible socialist alternative. At present there are two theoretical models for a genuinely democratically planned socialist economy, one developed by Pat Devine, and the other by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel. Hahnel’s Of the People, By the People is the latest, clearest and most concise exposition available of the latter model, Participatory Economics – or ParEcon for short. Not only does to this book show, to my mind convincingly, that there is a viable model of genuinely democratic socialism from the bottom up, it also, in so doing, provides a powerful argumentative tool for countering (at least certain kinds of) political scepticism.