Environmental Sustainability in a Sraffian Framework

This article expands the Sraffian framework to address environmental sustainability by showing how to define and measure what ecological economists call “throughput” and increases in throughput efficiency. In the process it clarifies issues that are often muddled in the steady-state and de-growth literatures

The Question of Profits

Where do profits come from? Are they morally justified? Sraffians provide a clear answer to the first question but have declined to give a direct answer to the second question. This article argues that the “fundamental Sraffian theorem” implies a compelling moral critique of profits, but that this critique can be strengthened by replacing the “contribution-based” approach common among economists with a “sacrifice-based” theory consistent with work by modern egalitarian philosophers

The ABCs of Political Economy

This revised edition of ABCs is a lively and accessible introduction to modern political economy. Informed by the work of Marx, Veblen, Kalecki, Robinson, Minsky and other great political economists, Robin Hahnel provides the essential tools needed to understand economic issues today. Dispelling myths about financial liberalisation, fiscal austerity, globalisation and free markets, ABCs offers a critical perspective on our present system and outlines clear alternatives for the future. This second edition applies the analytical tools developed to help readers understand the origins of the financial crisis of 2007, the ensuing 'Great Recession', and why government policies in Europe and North America over the past six years have failed to improve matters for the majority of their citizens. The second edition also helps explain what is causing climate change and what will be required if it is to be resolved effectively and fairly

Democratic Socialist Planning: Back to the Future

Some socialists have continued to argue that there is nothing wrong – indeed, that there is everything right – about early socialist visions of an economic system in which workers manage themselves, and worker and consumer councils plan and coordinate their activities together. And it has been thirty years since Michael Albert and I first proposed a model of participatory economic planning for the twenty-first century to show that deviating from this vision, to instead champion a model of worker-owned enterprises coordinated by markets as a way of escaping the dying Soviet system of state enterprises coordinated by a central plan, was both unnecessary and a mistake. The participatory economics ‘model’ has since been refined a number of times because it behooves those like myself, who continue to propose that councils of workers and consumers plan and manage their interrelated activities themselves, to explain concretely how they can do this, because it turns out it is neither obvious nor simple. The point of making a libertarian socialist vision more concrete is not to dictate to those who will live in some future economy what they must do. The point is to show by counter example why workers and consumers need not expose themselves to the anti-social forces inherent in markets nor to the authoritarian dynamics inherent in central planning because they can plan their interrelated activities perfectly well themselves. This essay reviews what the participatory economics model contributes to making the vision of early socialists more concrete, comprehensive, and convincing. While showing how and why new information technologies and capabilities are relevant to democratic socialist planning, it argues that whatever has prevented participatory planning from already being tried, it is not because it required some advance in mathematical theory, computational capacities, or information technologies yet to come. Participatory planning did not become possible only after mathematical theory evolved sufficiently to solve large, constrained optimization problems, only after computer capabilities evolved sufficiently to store and process large quantities of information quickly, and only after vast quantities of information could be accessed and communicated virtually instantaneously by anyone with a laptop computer

Economic Justice: Confronting Dilemmas

This article uses a simple economic model to study important issues in debates about distributive justice. What role do non-labor productive assets play? What role does private ownership play? What role does scarcity play? What role do credit and labor markets play? The model is used to address these questions, and in the process explain why even if those who acquire scarce productive assets do so fairly, and in a manner that deserves compensation, there is reason to believe (1) that when people own productive assets privately outcomes will become unfair, and (2) credit and labor markets will aggravate inequities. The article concludes that distributive justice requires compensation commensurate with the economic sacrifices people make and acknowledges important challenges that must be overcome to achieve this

The ABCs of Political Economy

This revised edition of ABCs is a lively and accessible introduction to modern political economy. Informed by the work of Marx, Veblen, Kalecki, Robinson, Minsky and other great political economists, Robin Hahnel provides the essential tools needed to understand economic issues today. Dispelling myths about financial liberalisation, fiscal austerity, globalisation and free markets, ABCs offers a critical perspective on our present system and outlines clear alternatives for the future. This second edition applies the analytical tools developed to help readers understand the origins of the financial crisis of 2007, the ensuing 'Great Recession', and why government policies in Europe and North America over the past six years have failed to improve matters for the majority of their citizens. The second edition also helps explain what is causing climate change and what will be required if it is to be resolved effectively and fairly