ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 provides an overview of our proposal for how a “participatory economy” would function. Because we have made concrete suggestions to address a very large number of issues that will inevitably arise, because we have responded rather than ignored criticisms raised over the past quarter century, and because our proposal is quite different from more common proposals for how to do comprehensive, democratic economic planning, there is much for us to present and for readers to digest. This chapter is a first “walk-through” of what a participatory economy looks like to help readers grasp its major features – social ownership; democratic worker and consumer councils and federations; income distribution according to sacrifice, effort, and need; jobs balanced for empowerment and desirability; and a social, iterative, participatory planning procedure in place of either markets or central planning.
