Turned out to be too big

It had seemed like a no-brainer.

Why should society be divided into classes, into the rich, privileged power elites and the alienated, exploited rest? It shouldn’t be. Why do we put up with the chaos, speculation, duplication, marketing noise, unemployment, and general irrationality of the market system? We shouldn’t. Can’t we do better? We should.

Straightforward full socialist vision: The idea of a rationally planned economy based on democratic social ownership and control of society’s productive assets.

It seemed like a no-brainer.

It never happened. It never worked. It turned out that the modern industrial economy is too large and too complex for there to be democratic control and rational planning.

When the left had to give up on that key part of the socialist vision it got discombobulated and never recovered.

https://www.tempestmag.org/2022/11/why-we-need-a-planned-economy/

Devine maintained the full socialist vision of social transformation that is inseparable from planning.

This article is essentially wistful. “Try again.”

But it’s impossible. So where do you go once you recognize that? You use the verbiage of ‘post-capitalism’ (or ‘eco-socialism’) rather than ‘socialism.’ You scale everything down, including expectations.