Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics

Three Essays on the History of Political Economy in the Twentieth Century

Keanu Telles — 2025-01-22

How To Leap Without Looking

Soroush Marouzi — 2025-01-13

Review of Branko Milanovic’s Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War. Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 2023, 368 pp.

Ulysse Lojkine — 2024-12-11

Review of Jon D. Wisman’s The Origins and Dynamics of Inequality: Sex, Politics, and Ideology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022, ix + 507 pp.

Gulzaar Barn — 2024-12-09

Review of Laura Valentini’s Morality and Socially Constructed Norms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023, ix + 236 pp.

Vittorio Catalano — 2025-01-30

Why Taxes Need Not Treat Equals Equally

Kristoffer Berg — 2025-01-18

Horizontal equity is the principle that similarly situated persons should be treated similarly. While the principle is often invoked in tax policy debates, I demonstrate that the principle lacks a firm normative foundation. The paper presents a thought experiment to argue that neither an entitlement to pre-tax income, nor the presence of effort in generating pre-tax income, can provide the necessary foundation for such a principle. Then, I explore whether a concern for equal treatment and avoiding statistical discrimination can support horizontal equity even when there is no entitlement to pre-tax income. I show that tax discrimination can be objectionable, but because discrimination requires a relevant pre-tax benchmark, it follows that non-discrimination cannot support a general principle of horizontal equity without an entitlement to pre-tax income. In conclusion, despite the intuitive appeal of horizontal equity, I argue that its basis as a normative principle in tax policy is weak.

Editors' Note

Jan Philipp Dapprich — 2025-01-30

Pluralism, Ecology and Planning

John O'Neill — 2025-01-24

In Economic Democratic Planning Robin Hahnel rearticulates and defends the model of participatory planning he developed with Michael Albert. This paper develops three lines of criticism of the model. It argues that the model’s principle of distribution of income among workers according to a metric of effort would involve pervasive surveillance of persons and potential humiliation. The use of a price metric of opportunity costs and cost-benefit analysis in the allocation of resources fails to address the implications of value-pluralism and incommensurability for their allocation. In response to Hahnel’s criticism of those who argue that environmental constraints entail limits to economic growth, it argues that we need to take those constraints more seriously than he does. The paper focuses on the second and third area of disagreement by placing those differences within the wider history of the socialist calculation debates and ecological economics.

Centralization Tendencies in Participatory Planning

Hannes Kuch — 2024-12-09

In the new debate about economic planning, the question of whether new forms of comprehensive planning might inadvertently encourage a relapse into authoritarianism must be central. The article analyzes the proposal of a “Participatory Economy” because it is the most sophisticated model for comprehensive planning without the need for centralized institutions. Planning is carried out in a participatory manner, enabling worker and consumer councils to coordinate their interrelated economic activities themselves. The danger of a relapse into authoritarianism appears to be averted. However, the paper argues that the Participatory Economy doesn’t live up to the goal it set for itself to a satisfying degree, because it requires more centralized institutions than it initially suggests. Centralization tendencies arise for strong normative reasons and are therefore difficult to avoid. Even worse, council-democratic remedies to centralization tendencies don’t offer an easy answer, as these remedies come with their own set of problems.

Democratic Theory and Economic Planning

Jan Philipp Dapprich — 2025-01-18

The participatory economics model (ParEcon) of Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel represents an important contribution to the debate about feasible alternatives to capitalism. What distinguishes the model from other proposals, like market socialism or cybersocialism, is the central role given to the participation of citizens in economic planning. Citizens form workers’ and neighbourhood consumers’ councils which develop production and consumption proposals. These councils form federations responsible for the coordination of planning. An Iteration Facilitation Board plays a mere perfunctory role in the facilitation of the planning process. This way, economic planning is done entirely by the citizens themselves rather than planners at a central planning agency. The ParEcon model is thereby supposed to be more democratic than historical central planning.
In this paper, I consider whether three possible justifications for democracy can also be used to support this kind of participatory economy. These justifications can be referred to as (1) the protection of citizens’ interests, (2) the revealing of preferences and (3) liberty. In my paper, I show that these three justifications of democracy do not in fact support democratic participation in concrete economic plans in the way envisaged by Albert and Hahnel. Instead of individual plans, citizens should choose general planning procedures. This prevents citizens from being subjected to the arbitrary power of their co-workers or neighbours. Such an algorithmic planning process also prevents central planners from holding arbitrary power since, much like the Iteration Facilitation Board in the ParEcon model, they simply facilitate the prescribed planning process without retaining significant discretion. As I elaborate in the case of consumption planning, citizens can still participate in planning, however they do so through their individual choices rather than a democratic vote. Individual citizens should not require the approval of their neighbours for their personal consumption.

Author Replies to Critics

Robin Hahnel — 2025-01-30

This is my response to what three "critics" have written about my book, Democratic Economic Planning (Routledge, 2021). I thank my "critics" and the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics for taking my work seriously, and hope this probing exchange will serve to improve thinking about alternatives to capitalism as the twenty-first century proceeds. In each of my responses I begin by highlighting areas of agreement, then identify areas where perhaps our disagreement may not be critical, and conclude by explaining my point of view where I believe our disagreement does matter.

Incommensurability, Environment and Planning: A Response to Hahnel's Reply

John O'Neill — 2025-01-30

This paper responds to Hahnel’s reply to my paper ‘Pluralism, ecology and planning’ in this special issue. It focuses on disagreements concerning value commensurability and growth. It defends the possibility of rational choices in the use of resources in the absence of value commensurability. It defends the claim that the systematic drive for growth in capitalism is a central source of environmental problems and of environmental injustice. It questions Hahnel’s assertion that substitution in production and consumption alone is the only strategy to achieve environmental sustainability. Substitution is necessary but not sufficient. Environmental limits require consumption and production corridors above sufficiency for all but below excess. Those corridors are a condition for meeting the needs of the poor within environmental limits. Both the examination of environmental problems in capitalism and democratic planning require forms of in-kind analysis defended by Neurath and Kapp to address the problem of meeting human needs within environmental limits.

Neo-Roman Socialism

Dennis Graemer — 2025-01-30

One of the most powerful arguments against socialism consists in the claim that it is incompatible with liberty. In the works of F.A. Hayek, this argument is developed in a sophisticated and systematic manner. Hayek’s attempt to prove the incompatibility of socialism and freedom relies on a concept of liberty that derives from the tradition of classical republicanism, and bears significant resemblance to the one used by current neo-republicans. To be free means not to be ruled in an arbitrary manner, not to be ruled by people, but by laws. Socialism however, Hayek claims, implies the direct and discretionary rule of bureaucrats over the whole economy, and thereby violates liberty.

The paper will examine this argument in detail, illuminate its connection to republicanism, and refute it. Such a refutation will not be directed against the concept of liberty employed by Hayek; instead, it will be shown that socialism properly implemented can conform to the demands of Hayek’s liberty.

Planning, Democracy and Collective Freedom

Heiner Koch — 2025-01-22

If we defend planned economies not only on the basis of efficiency but also on the basis of freedom, we have to be able to address authoritarian tendencies of planned economies on the one hand and argue against liberals for the value of collective freedom in planned economies on the other. First, I trace the problematic theorization of the relationship between collective and individual freedom in the historical debates of liberalism and real socialism. Then I examine whether the republican concept of freedom as non-domination can avoid the pitfalls of negative and positive freedom. Subsequently I explore collective freedom through collective action theory, arguing for its inherent value and its potential existence independent of individual freedom. Genuine collective freedom relies on voluntary individual contributions and collective decisions that reflect individual will. Finally I argue that while democracy can help balance collective and individual freedoms, it cannot fully resolve the inherent tension. Alternative conflict resolution strategies may prove more effective. Ultimately, planned economies offer a unique form of collective freedom, though potentially at the expense of individual freedom. Minimizing this tension remains a key challenge.

In this paper, I will first defend the idea of collective freedom through planning against liberal, republican and anarchist criticism. Subsequently, I will not develop concrete solutions for the mediation of collective freedom and individual freedom in a planned economy, but I will present approaches and concepts that can be used to deal with the problem of mediation. Democracy plays a central role here, but is not the only solution.

Freedom, State, and Market

Angus Hebenton — 2024-12-09

The complexity of the real history of economic planning in practice, as well as the variety of rationales that have been offered in theory for various (more or less comprehensive) forms of planning, both suggest that political philosophy would benefit from a more nuanced and less simplistic approach to the discussion of state planning of the economy. The aim of our article is to clear some ground for a discussion of markets and democratic economic planning within normative political philosophy that takes a less stark and dichotomous approach in considering the relationship between markets and state planning, and takes more account of the complexities of both the theory and historical practice of economic planning. The article considers some of the different varieties of democratic economic planning, and the rationales for different forms of imperative and indicative planning regimes, as well as other alternative planning mechanisms. In particular the article looks to bring renewed attention to the theoretical rationales for planning offered by two important theorists of the mixed economy: James Meade and Stuart Holland. We close by revisiting the powerful normative case for economic planning provided by Barbara Wootton, whose rejection of F. A. Hayek’s critique of planning, as well as her positive case for planning on grounds of freedom, democracy, and social equality, deserves to be much better known, and whose work is ripe for reintegration into contemporary normative discussions of social justice and political economy.

Economics, Pluralism and Democracy

Ha-Joon Chang — 2024-12-11