The People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism

by Leigh Phillips, Michal Rozworski

Since the demise of the USSR, the mantle of the largest planned economies in the world has been taken up by the likes of Walmart, Amazon and other multinational corporations

For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us?

An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.

Genres: Economics, Politics, Nonfiction, History, Theory, Business, Sociology

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2019

About the author

Leigh Phillips is a science writer and European Union affairs journalist. Writing for Nature, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the New Statesman, Jacobin, Scientific American, amongst other outlets, he has visited appallingly ill-equipped Siberian tuberculosis hospices, interviewed Mexican nanotechnology researchers bombed by eco-terrorists, tricked into eating whale meat by Norwegian diplomats in the high Arctic, followed Hungarian fascists on a torch-lit march threatening a gypsy village, and been tear-gassed and punched in the face by Italian Carabinieri. A long-time Brussels-based reporter, he also spent a decade exposing corporate capture of EU law-making and its accompanying hollowing out of democracy.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

For simplicity's sake I'm simply gonna split the book review in two:

+)
I love the cover so much and would advise you purchase it just to have it. The texture of the cover is also quite sensuous; most Monthly Review books have a similarly spongy feel.

It contains very useful categories. Envisioning firms as zones in which all movement and distribution is planned, with the edges corresponding to all the commodities entering & leaving, one gets a very clear sense of just how planned a 'market society' is — even more so in this monopolist stage.

The point about index funds working as a for-profit planning authority resonates a lot, and has its roots in both Lenin and the Chinese marketisation 1979-1992.

Paul Cockshott.

-)
Why is there no bibliography. Why no numbers or footnotes. No empirical investigation. No original research. Why does the book feel like a proof of concept instead of the thing itself.

The stuff on the Soviet Union is irredeemably low-effort. It didn't count as planned because it was too ad-hoc, authoritarian and nasty. The category that's been wishi-washily built up is suddenly replaced by a moral judgement. The chapter does not engage with the internal economic mechanics of the time, instead preferring to dwell on the figure of Stalin.

The book has no concepts of class. "Why would a peasant prefer an unelected bureaucrat over an unelected capitalist?" Because, I wager, the first guarantees a couple hundred million lives without wanton rapacious violence and the second sells off your livelihood if it makes them a buck. Everything is dissolved in an idealized nebulous democracy/authoritarianism-dichotomy; the USSR was bad because it jailed suspected counterrevolutionaries, Allende was good because his three years in power held a lot of hope for the future (before a generation was drowned in the reign of helicopter fascists).

More an extended thinkpiece than a book or pamphlet really. I can't use this in discussions, it doesn't source anything.

++) But very very nice cover

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better than I expected!

The title - and some pre-release press - made me think this would be a superficial examination of Walmart and Amazon's efficiencies that didn't grapple with the extractive and exploitative means they used to achieve them. But it's actually an accessible history of economic planning, in theory and in practice!

The book covers the "socialist calculation" debate between the market socialist and Austrian schools of economics, all the way through Coase's theory of the firm. The authors also cover actual experiments in planning, ranging from post-October Russia to (you guessed it) Walmart. It's a fun and readable introduction to the field.

SPOILER ALERT: "unplanned" market economies are anything but, and the real dispute is over who will do the planning.

Minor quibble: the intro and early chapters are full of self-conscious quips as the authors apologize for wasting our time with such a boring subject. Thankfully, this withers away pretty quickly. Don't apologize for being the book I bought, book!

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a good introductory overview of problems of planning. One thing I kept thinking while reading the book is that it focuses a lot on the enormous scale of Walmart/Amazon as a sort of obvious proof that there is something efficient about the way it uses logistics. This is then counterbalanced with talk about how the workers are exploited and other social problems caused by how the companies are run. I guess my lingering doubt was that if you priced in all of those problems that the efficiency of the model would disappear. As in, maybe the scale is a premature accident of exploitation and not a natural consequence of the march of technology. To their credit though the writers make sure to say that's entirely possible and that it's not just about converting capitalist monopolies into state monopolies. The idea of pushing the limits of democratic planning within a grey area that isn't necessarily state or market is exciting and something worth thinking about.

[Logan Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

I selected this book for our book club to read, since there are a couple of beginner-leftists in the group and I thought this book would suit their level.

The first half of the book is great. The authors do an excellent job explaining some tough concepts concerning planning and supply chains. I appreciated how much emphasis was given on how dismissive capitalist economics generally are of economic planning and how the "free market" should dictate all, while ruthlessly tearing this view apart by demonstrating how fantastic of planners the very titans of capitalism are. Modern computers especially make planning vast corporations like Walmart and Amazon, whose size is comparable to medium sized countries, possible, so using the same techniques to plan economies is completely possible. I especially enjoyed the story of the demise of Sears. The CEOs thought it would be a great idea to have each department of the corporation, instead of working together, work competitively and selfishly. Obvious to everyone except these free-market Randians, Sears immediately tore itself apart and started bleeding money, quickly and pathetically ending a proud company that had been around for over a century.

The second half of the book was trash. It started going downhill with the history of the British NHS, but completely went off a cliff with the attacks against the USSR. This book has no citations or notes, so as far as I can discern they only read a single book about this topic, since they only referenced the British liberal historian Alexander Nove (and they referenced him many times). It is honestly slanderous the things they say, completely ignoring all historical context and dismissing all the potentially positive aspects while exaggerating the negatives (while again, critically, ignoring or distorting the context). It was all a bunch of moralizing and outrage-porn, and combined with the complete shift in tone to jargon-filled vacuous statements, it made for tough reading.

I dismiss the honestly childish thesis they formed in the second half of the book: that authoritarianism is BAD and democracy is GOOD. Yes, yes, we all like democracy, but literally every social system is authoritarian to a certain degree. If a system forces a single person to do a single thing against their will (for example, pay taxes) that system will be called authoritarian by somebody. The only system that is objectively free of authoritarianism is anarcho-capitalism, but only for about 10 seconds, because it will very quickly lead to a Mad Max-type world which is maximally authoritarian.

Their solution was to point to the 3 year government of Chile's Allende. Everyone loves Allende; he is the friendly Socialist who came to power peacefully through elections, nationalized the copper mines, and started making real positive change. That is, before the CIA-supported fascist-neoliberal Pinochet easily conducted a military coup against him.

This is always what happens when socialism comes to power whether through elections or through revolution; the reactionaries will counter-attack. This is also a catch-22: If the socialist government prepares, gathers its strength, and successfully fights off the reactionaries (as in the Bay of Pigs, for example) the liberals and social democrats and "democratic socialists" will cry about how authoritarian these socialists are; however, if the socialist government does not properly prepare, they will be wiped out and people like Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski will lovingly praise them for having a wonderful dream that sadly didn't come true. Maybe next time! One of the great ironies of history is that the AK-47 Allende used to kill himself when the military was coming to arrest him was a gift from Fidel Castro, and on the rifle there was a gold plate that said: "To my good friend Salvador from Fidel, who by different means tries to achieve the same goals." The fruits of one means (revolution, in this case Cuba) still exists and has world-class doctors that save lives around the world, and the other was destroyed only three years after coming into power democratically (in Chile). The irony on top of this irony is that when examining the election system of "authoritarian" Cuba, it actually has a fantastic, transparent, inclusive election system that is far superior to the US's joke of a "democratic" system.

Read this book for the first half, and trash it before starting the second half.

[Rob M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a clear, well researched, and timely intervention into the debate around left wing economics that has made such a resurgence in recent years.

Socialism is not a simple moral alignment, it is not a value set, it is a distinct proposal for the organisation of production. From Marx onwards, socialist thought has proposed to progress society beyond the revolutionary but amoral market forces which define capitalist production, and towards a form of economic planning that allows human need to replace the profit motive as the driver of the creation and distribution of wealth.

Economic planning, however, is slandered almost as the socialist idea itself. Not only does this prevent clear-sighted analysis of where planning has gone wrong, but also prevents us recognising where planning has worked admirably.

This is why this book will be so illuminating for many readers already convinced of the correctness of the socialist principle, but unable to wrap their minds around what the socialist economy would really look like, beyond heavily regulated welfare capitalism.

However, this is not just a sermon for the party faithful. It will also be interesting to economic thinkers of the right. Just like the great debates around economic planning in the 1930s, it engages with theories of capitalist production on their own terms.

For example, if the market is the most efficient mode of allocating resources, why do the massive multinational firms of our age (like Walmart) operate planned economies internally? Why has the internal market in the NHS been so wasteful while the big data led planning operation inside Amazon been such a triumph of efficiency?

As well as looking at the mechanics of contemporary capitalism, it makes several important historical case studies. The Soviet boom of the 1950/60s and experiments with cybernetic planning systems in Salvador Allendé's Chile are especially illuminating and thought provoking.

My only criticism of this book is that while it takes a long overdue plunge into the reality of socialist economic planning, it overcorrects itself and attempts to insulate itself from the hysterical anti-sovietism that a book like this will inevitably attract. Thus, in some places, it hamstrings itself. For example, it goes to great lengths to explain how the botched Stalinist collectivisation process was less an act of real planning and much more like opportunism and plunder. This is fine as far as it goes, but the book spends so long on this point that it doesn't bother to look at any other aspects of Stalinist planning that might be more useful to us - for example, how did the Soviet Union pack up their entire Western industrial zone under fire in 1941 and re-establish a gigantic military-industrial complex a thousand miles away in Siberia almost overnight? The People's Republic of Walmart acknowledges that the 1930s was the golden age of economic planning in theory, but allows the Moscow trials to scare it away from a serious look at the first ever economic plans put into practice.

Overall however, this book is a treasure trove. The writing style is fast paced, witty and engrossing, and although I personally would love to have seen a fully referenced version, oozing with footnotes and packing a bibliography as long as the text itself, the populist format is the right choice. Our current political moment has awakened a great many aspiring economic thinkers, people who might not have time to unpack a formal textbook during their 20 minute lunch break, so this book will strike just the right balance for them, as it did for me.

Could not recommend enough.

[Gabrielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

"This idea—that finance itself will socialize production—may read like clickbait provocateurism"

The above source criticism unfortunately applies to this book as well. I picked it up hoping that it would provide case studies on the way that modern large corporations act as planned economies. Unfortunately it provides little more detail than assertion that they do. It is actually a polemic, which phrases that range from the asanine:

"Social scientists have long understood that building different institutions will also make us into different people. Will we still need incentives?"

to the (the unfortunately common white leftist) "colour-blind" rhetoric:

"delivering unto the boss (at least for the hours of work) no less a whip hand than that of the slavemaster"

Just read the blurb, there's no more content on the inside.

[Steffi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I guess we need to talk about planning. ‘The People’s Republic of Walmart’ (VERSO, 2019) is a very convenient primer on (democratic) planning, re-thinking planning in light of the already existing great swaths of the global economy that exists outside the market and are planned. Walmart, the world’s largest private employer, and third largest employer after the US and Chinese military, with an ‘economy’ comparable to Sweden’s, is a prime example of this sort of complex global central planning.

The question is whether this sort of complex planning, which is now technologically possible, can be democratic, whether the ongoing massive revolution in data and technology will become tools for authoritarian capitalism or democratic planning. A sort of democratic planning which could overcome the tyranny of the market without creating a Soviet style tyranny of planning bureaucrats. While all this is quite technical and technological, ultimately it’s political and it’s critical to bring back planning into the discourse as we are looking for real opportunities for a 21st century socialism. Public ownership (nationalization) alone does not mean democratic ownership and a more egalitarian allocation of resources and opportunities than currently done by the market where like 26 individuals own more than the bottom 3 billion people or so. So this was a good to bring me up to speed in terms of what’s going on in this rather neglected field of economic planning and the debate of the role of the market in democratic socialism. Definitely triggered a lot of thinking and a follow-up reading list 😊

[Kevin Carson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Typical of the left-accelerationist approach. It shares a lot of the same technological and economic assumptions as Inventing the Future by Srnicek and Williams -- which is not a good thing.

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“What is profitable is not always useful, and what is useful is not always profitable.”

There’s a lot of good stuff in here from Allende’s Cybersyn project, a kind of socialist democratic internet prototype thingmy, which was later destroyed by Pinochet, to asking how many people out there know that the algorithm that led to Google’s success was funded by a public sector National Science Foundation grant? Or that Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPhone.

This book destroys the many toxic myths surrounding Neo-liberalism and the private sector, reminding just how reliant the private sector is and has been on central planning and government intervention, a little thing called the Global Financial Crisis beautifully illustrates just how hopeless and incompetent the idea is and of course ultimately how parasitical too.

“How was it possible, after the war, for Russia to put the first satellite, and the first human, in space? And how was it possible for Moscow to deliver free health care to all its citizens and transform a population of illiterate peasants into one with universal literacy, extensive post-secondary education and some of the greatest, achievements in science and technology outside of the United States?”

I found it amusing and enlightening that he made a point of reminding us that what most people refer to as the Nobel Prize in Economics (myself included) is actually called “the Swedish National Bank’s Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.” and it’s not really one of the prizes. Also we learn that as of January 2018 more than the 50% of total new sales in Norway were electric vehicles, largely thanks to government intervention which resulted in free parking and charges for vehicles as well as allowing them to use bus lanes too.

So this was a really enjoyable little read, its accessible, informative and presents some really interesting points as well as dispelling many common myths along the way too.

[Reid tries to read · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the earlier essays in here are written like the intended audience are kids who are bullied for using out of date internet speak in real life (“rustling jimmies”, talk of “hello kitty albums”, etc). But overall it’s really good

[Brandon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know who this book is for.

First things first: It was poorly edited. "Let us restrict ourselves to alighting upon perhaps its central misadventure" is a sentence that appears on page four. This kind of violence dominates the first half of the book. My impression was that it started to calm down by the time we get to the chapter on the NHS. Which brings me to the second problem: Why is there a chapter on the NHS? And why is there a chapter on Soviet factionalism? What is the chapter on Allende doing in the same book as those two things? Why do they appear in that order? It's very clear what the authors' beliefs are, but those beliefs read more like pronouncements and assertions than as meaningful explanations of why "authoritarianism undermines central planning" or why one should be as afraid of a new Stalin as of actually-existing Bezos.

And that brings me back to my first question: Who is this book for?

I suppose it is for "libertarian socialists," whoever they are, that fear central planning, but aren't convinced that socdem or market socialist solutions are going to be good enough. Which - ok. Maybe - maybe - this book is also for people who are more right-leaning and are scared that planned economies mean gulags (but for some reason don't fear the far more populous actually existing prison archipelago in the United States, that again, actually exists, today, here, which they don't seem to blame on capitalism)? Which - ok. But also: What?

All in all, I would love to read a book about the NHS, or Proyecto Synco, or the Russian Civil War, but this book seems to say nothing more than "a centrally planned economy is possible and there's no reason to think that such a thing will lead to atrocities." Which - duh? Yes? And of course there are people who will disagree with that... but how is this book supposed to reach them? And what exactly is it trying to show them?

I am very confused. But I am glad that a different authorial voice started predominating halfway through the book. It made for much more pleasant reading, if equally puzzled.

[Bob Rosenbaum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everything I learned from this book was contained in the first chapter. The whole point - and I'll spoil it here - is that the internal operations of successful corporations are all planned economies, more like the Soviet experiment than the blind faith capitalists place on market economies.
Later on, there is some detailed history about the planned-economy experiments of the Soviet Union, Hungary and Chile - and interpretations of why each of them failed.
The book's conclusion is that capitalism ain't all it's cracked up to be (duh!) and our quickly advancing use of Big Data indicates it's time again to try economic planning on a national basis.
Maybe I agree; maybe I don't. But once I realized the only new information I was going to get after page 75 or so was granular political history of other countries during the Cold War, this became a skim for me.

[Stephen Pinna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction/polemic about economic planning. While not an academic work, it does make reference to many of the protagonists in the various calculation/planning debates. It's well written and topical but I can't give it five stars because it doesn't have a list for further reading.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

"What defenders of capitalism are afraid of is not planning, but its democratization."

A great exposé of internal planning in capitalist firms, and of macroeconomic planning's role in fomenting crisis conditions, giving the lie to ideological obfuscations of systemic culpability. A rallying call to consider practical alternative models for economic planning that don't concede to regulatory capture or other naked examples of class dictatorship.

My one gripe with this book, and it's a big one, is how it throws much "Actually Existing Socialist" experience under the bus. Yes, there have been cumbersome bureaucracies in many of those experiments, even if we question the more dramatic of the tales spun during the Cold War, but there are pockets of planning within them from which we absolutely must draw lessons.

Take the example of Cuba. Phillips & co-author give barely a passing footnote worth of attention to the ongoing planning in Cuban society, glossing over it all with a claim of Cuba following in China's footsteps in the wake of the Cold War. Yet, as Helen Yaffe details in "We Are Cuba!", market reforms in the Cuban context are contained and hardly analogous to the Chinese approach. They are part of a broader strategy of adaptation to ongoing embargo and the difficulties of a "Special Period" after 1991. If the state inevitably plays a role, this does not always (and does not in this case) preclude autonomous decentralized activity of civil society from playing a role even within the scope of broader socioeconomic planning. Horticulture and to some extent energy (solar, specifically) are two key areas where the state of course has objectives in mind but where citizens have significant leeway in the actual household decision-making and practice. Not to suggest its utopian but it does show a persisting capacity for democratic and/or autonomous activity within planning that need not involve to-the-letter, state-inspector-confirmed implementation.

"Markets are human creations; indeed, Afam Smith's prehistory of plucky Neolithic humans getting by through 'truck and barter' is as inaccurate as the creationist Eden where humans rode dinosaurs. Rather than being natural and inevitable, markets are a planned institution."

"decommodification (the elimination of market provision of a good or service) is only a necessary condition of democratization of the economy; it is not a sufficient condition."

"Mises and Hayek have it backwards: it is not that degradation of economic information as a result of planning leads to authoritarianism, but that authoritarianism drives degradation of information, which undermines planning." (Alternatively, 'lack of imagination' and limited capacity led to cutting corners and falling back on marketizing influences in planning rather than democratic enhancement.)

Soviet Planning:

-"It was necessity, not ideology, that drove the prohibition of private trade in consumer items. As supplies ran out, not only of consumer necessities, but of raw materials and fuel, there was, according to [Alec] Nove, 'a fatally logical escalation in the degree of state control, state operation and finally also state ownership.'"
-Establishment of 'Vesenkha' (Supreme Council of National Economy)-December 1917.
-Unelected bureaucrats vs. bosses. "What difference does it make...?" Mandate to direct production/allocation on basis of social determinants, not personal profits!!!
-"Democracy is the beating heart of socialism, and as we shall see it is the crucial check against economic inefficiency."
-"some nationalizations were even due to the refusal of employers to accept rule by workers' councils, and their preference fo state takeover as the less intolerable option."
-"The chaos and extent of unauthorized nationalization of industry unnerved central authorities...by June, reversal into decree nationalizing all factories---WAR COMMUNISM.
-"Foreign trade, urban distribution of food and other items came under direction of the state, while food requisition from peasants....was introduced in an attempt to come to grips with the threat of famine."
-"The move was made less in support of nationalization from below, or to advance the cause of socialist democracy, than it was to impose some order to chaotic conditions amid growing civil war [cobditions of Brest-Litovsk, and Western naval blockade].

*********-"Restoration of order was not just imperative, but popular."*********

-"the running expenses of much of the economy began to come straight out of the budget; as a result, actual cash payments began to mean less and less."
-"Local economic councils resolved that state industrial enterprises deliver their products to other enterprises upon the instruction of the Vesenkha without need for payment, and that they should receive the materials and services they need in the same manner."
-"Expenditures became more a practice of bookkeeping than exchange."
"By the end of 1918, a new body, this one called the Commission of Utilization, only tasked with the question of distribution, began to draft material balance sheets."

*********"The ideological wish for a moneyless society merged with the exigencies of a crisis economy."*********

-*****"Expropriation of smaller enterprises, however, was ruled 'absolutely out of the question,' as it would be impossible to organize such small-scale production and distribution."
-Despite decree forbidding it, "vast, ad hoc nationalizations of businesses of [fewer than five employees] did indeed occur, but without any coherent plan, as authorities (where they existed) hurtled 'from bottleneck to bottleneck.'
-***"Meanwhile, a vast underground economy exacerbate shortages and inflation, and drew resources away from war priorities. And so, in November 1920, despite the utter inability and distinct lack of desire of administrators, with their embryonic planning capacity...a decree announced the nationalization of all small-scale industry."
-"While Lenin was ultimately successful in reinstalling the principle of one-person management in workplaces, this took varying forms."
-Workers' Opposition wanted trade union control over the economy. Trotsky called for full militarization of labour.
-"Precisely because the current dire situation demanded such bureaucratic, centralizing distortion of socialist goals, [Lenin] believed there was a need for trade unions to maintain an independent ability to embody their members' interest at this or that factory."
-"Trade union control of the economy would in effect transform the trade unions into managerial arms of the Vesenkha, representing the interest of the management with respect to workers." Greater party control of trade unions, with personnel involved in both party and union management.
(BUT WAS MANAGEMENT ITSELF NOT DEMOCRATIC REPRESENTATION?)

-*********"IT IS IN FACT AUTHORITARIANISM THAT FATALLY UNDERMINES PLANNING."

-"The Bolsheviks confronted a paradox: a shift to light industrial production would likely result in the crushing of the revolution from without; but if they di not shift to light industrial production, the revolution would likely be crushed from within."
*****-"In short, the early soviets suffered due to an agricultural sector that had yet to be integrated into capitalism...Instead, the revolution had liberated peasants by turning them into smallholders."
-"out of a fear of the return of the landlords, peasants remained sufficiently loyal to the Bolsheviks to ensure their victory in the civil war by 1922."
-In wake of War Communism and need for development: New Economic Policy (NEP)!
-"The NEP's legalization of private trade turned out to be a rapid success, particularly with respect to consumer items in the countryside. Small workshops that had been nationalized were now leased to entrepreneurs and cooperatives, while the state held onto heavy industry, finance and foreign trade. ***TALK OF THE ABOLITION OF MONEY VANISHED AS STATE ENTERPRISES WOULD NOW HAVE TO OPERATE ON THE BASIS OF COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTING.RESOURCES NECESSARY FOR PRODUCTION, NOTBLY FUEL, WOULD HAVE TO BE PAID FOR WITH FUNS OBTAINED FROM SALES INSTEAD OF WITH EASY CREDIT FROM THE CENTER."***

-"Factories would operate as autonomous, competitive units aiming for profits and avoidance of losses." Concessions to foreign capital in hope of access to modern machinery!
-Regrettably, compelled turn to old tsarist bureaucrats' expertise (with strict accountability measures?!)
-*"it was the acute shortages and bottlenecks, rather than a renewed fervour for socialism [both?], that drove the growth of administrative controls and ultimately the adoption of more centralized planning."
-Task of rapid industrialization fell to State Planning Committee (GOSPLAN). Supplanted Vesenkha.
First five-year plan (1928-32) involved 'unified financial plan' covering all investment decisions through state bank.
-"State enterprises were placed under the direction of the relevant people's commissariat...with the director of each firm following the direct orders of the given commissariat. Each produced plans for its enterprises in keeping with the general policy objectives set by Gosplan and, in turn, assessed the range of consequences of different plans and worked to reconcile them through a system of 'material balances' [a balance sheet of outputs and presumed utilization needs of all sectors]." Changes made relative to targets achievements.

-***"THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE HERE GAVE RISE TO LOGISTICAL, ACCOUNTING AND PLANNING TECHNIQUES THAT WERE LATER ADOPTED BY CAPITALIST CORPORATIONS AND REMAIN AT THE CORE OF THEIR INTERNAL PLANNING TO THIS DAY."
-USSR as a "company town stretching across one-sixth of the world."-"Wrecking" as both excessively ambitious and excessively cautious planning.
-"the new collective farms had no experience in animal husbandry en masse, and animals died of neglect, while the party activists sent to direct the process had no better knowledge."
-Genuine cooperation as some peasants who abandoned kolkhozes formed smaller cooperatives in order to survive.
-During "agricultural extension", sending party experts to farms, those party members were convinced of need to lower grain procurement (source?!). state leadership concluded collective farms had to be purged of "saboteurs" among the bookkeepers and agronomists.

-***"If diligent, careful and precise gathering of correct data is the foundation of planning, then the Soviet Union under Stalin has to be considered a mockery of a planned economy."
-Postwar decade, "Planning became ever more a prisoner of Stalin's caprice, with many important questions decided by him alone without discussion with workers, economists or specialists." (DIRECTLY CONTRADICTED BY CIA DOCUMENT EXPLICITLY NOTING "COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP".)

[Oliver Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging and interesting left wing economics book. Some of the theory is a bit heavy going, but it comes alive when talking about how big companies use centralised planning.

[La Crosse Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

The People's Republic of Walmart by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski, is an investigation in contemporary and historic central planning, where it works, and where it might do even more. While conventional wisdom dictates that central planning is inefficient and free market competition is the best way to ensure maximum productivity, the business giants of today illustrate that this is not true. Walmart and Amazon, today's economic powerhouses, succeed not from free competition between their stores and departments, but from centralized planning and mutual aid between warehouses, storefronts, and factories producing goods. The book is by no means a defense of our current business paradigm, and does not apologize or excuse their poor treatment of employees and environmentally damaging practices. It is a lesson in how all capitalist enterprises contain elements of central planning, usually through the dictatorship of management. The book goes on to review the many successes of government led research and development, which accounts for the great majority of advancements in our society. It is a great read which challenges common assumptions, and backs up its claims to boot.

~Peter, Library Assistant

[Elan Garfias · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was way better than expected. It starts by laying out the case that modern multinationals have created their own intimately planned economies, surpassing Gosplan's wildest dreams with all the classic irony for which capitalism is known. When considering how many of these companies boast a market capitalization bigger than several countries' GDP, it's worth taking a look at the old economic planning debate once more. This book does exactly that, sketching out the ideological exchanges between free marketeers and socialists in the first half of the twentieth century, a debate which seemed mute after 91. Yet in the aftermath of capitalist triumph and corporate consolidation, carefully planned internal regimes aided by computing gathered steam within boardrooms, and in at least one example--Sears--massively overperformed when pitted against anarchic market libertarianism at the firm level. Far from being merely another theoretical defense of how planning could work, this book shows how it already does, just not in the way we might have expected. Part two details the Chilean socialists' groundbreaking first stab at cybernetic planning in more detail than I've managed to find anywhere else, then dovetails into computational advances made since the 70s that might make such a system all the more feasible. At the very least, the massive date crunching so profitable to modern tech companies is revolutionary when considering all the inputs. In summary, though the Soviet Union and its particular variety of centralized state capitalism is long gone, we are surrounded by vast corporate planning at every step; the challenge for socialists now is to put those plans to work for us. Also invest in index funds lol.

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

fantastic overview of the current history and state of modern socialist economics

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is quite unequal. Too much humorous little comments in the first chapters combined with the absence of any footnote or even a bibliography quickly showed the lack of seriousness of the project. This is unfortunate since the subject is relevant and important. Another frustration I had is that they stress the importance of democratic planning throughout the book but don't spend a whole sentence discussing what would it look like, how can we achieve it, what obstacles we might have, etc. The chapters on USSR and their economic planning is poorly written and dense with unexplained economical concepts, that contrast with the rest of the book, which was clearly written to be accessible. I learned a few things, it made me use my imagination, but not much more. It is a promising subject though and I wish more authors will try to think about planning, how it is already used today and how can it benefit a more equal and democratic society.

Here a suggestion for further reading for those interested : Digital Socialism by Evgeny Morozov in the New Left Review
https://newleftreview.org/issues/II11...

[Mariles Jorge · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great book on illustrating how even capitalist, states or individuals, don't follow market ideology unless it benefits them. But otherwise it falls flat as it does not dive deeper into the capitalist inside planning and also falls into infantile "authoritarian left" bashing, even though the book somewhat acknowledge that without a revolution a socialist state will be crushed (like Allende's) the conclusion made on the USSR is that it was bad planning because it was authoritarian. That conclusion seems shallow and very internet meme "authoritarian left bad because compass say so". Otherwise its a good argument on the need of planning as a necessity for an egalitarian economy. Read towards a new socialism by Paul Cockshott if you want to dive deeper into planning economics

[Matthias · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very readable overview of a very important (set of) subject(s), advancing a project towards which I am extremely sympathetic. However, a lot depends on the technical details (on subjects as vastly dispersed as formal computing problems, Amazon logistics, and planetary science), and it remains rather abstracted towards these (though it does suggest helpful further reading.) This being the case, it may serve to get someone new to questions of economic planning interested in the subject, while proponents and skeptics will be better off consulting more specialized and technical literature.

[Hrafnkell Úlfur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ágæt bók sem hefði getað verið mun dýpri og ýtarlegri, þar sem það er augljóst að höfundarnir tveir vita alveg sitthvað um það sem þeir skrifa um ef marka má þá hugsuði sem þeir vísa reglulega í, en þeir virðast sífellt halda sér við yfirborðið til þess að halda hlutunum einföldum fyrir meðallesandann.

Bókin fer yfir sósíalíska/kommúníska eiginleika í innra skipulagi ofur-kapítalískra stórfyrirtækja á borð við Walmart og Amazon. Hér væri vert að minnast á að Amazon er eigandi þessarar vefsíðu, þannig að gagnrýnin og stjörnugjöfin á þessari bók verður einfaldlega eitt tannhjól meðal margra sem nýtist algríma fyrirtækisins. Saga skipulags í efnahagi er svo rakin frá uppruna Sovétríkjanna við aldamótin þarsíðustu, til tilraunakennda Cybersyn verkefnisins í Síle á áttunda áratug sömu aldar. Helsti galli bókarinnar er hinsvegar skortur á almennilegri umfjöllun um hvernig hægt væri að færa þessa aðferðarfræði Walmarts og Amazon yfir í sósíalískt/kommúnískt samhengi, því að höfundarnir enda bókina einfaldlega á orðunum: "Planning works, just not yet for us." Þannig að engar almennilegar tillögur um mögulega útfærslur á þessu eru ræddar, heldur er lesendum einungis gefin einhversskonar hálf-aumingjaleg von um að þetta reddist bara allt saman.

[Kaleb Wulf · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was primed to hate this book based on the other Verso/Jacobin books I read recently, but this was a nice change of pace. I have qualms with how it defines "planned" economies, but on the whole the book is a good introduction to industrial economies and macroeconomics. It gives you a wide breadth of approaches to economic structures with a lot of opportunities to fall into Wikipedia holes. May come back later and edit with full thoughts.

[Jacob Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful, but extremely elementary. Start here, for an accessible discussion of planning and markets under capitalism and socialism, but don't stop here.

[tickle monster · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great book if you just like vibes. If you like serious scholarly work and analysis based on primary sources, go read a proper researcher like Grover Furr or listen to him speak. Should've just stuck to the topic of Walmart rather than parroting all sorts of anticommunist nonsense without any citations. There are some nuggets of interesting ideas but nothing outstanding and the shoddy scholarship undermines the entire thesis of the book.

[Twig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The People's Republic of Walmart goes over the history of planned economies, how they worked and why they failed. If you're looking for a book on how Walmart if a planned economy, look elsewhere. This book barely talks about it at all and doesn't fully explain the concept. It talks a bit about how Amazon acts as a planned economy, but definitely not enough if that's the main thing you want to read this noon for.

That doesn't mean it's not a good book. It's quite informative and goes in depth about planning and how it fails when it's incorrectly implemented. It talks a lot about what we shouldn't do when building a planned economy and explains it very well. It's easy to understand and genuinely fun to read because of the humorous nature of the writing. It's a book you'll want to pick up and read, not just feel obligated to read to learn more about planning.

One qualm I have about this book though is that it offers way more criticism than solutions. The majority of the book is talking about different systems of economic planning like big data or the market socialism and criticizing the ideas. This is useful, though gets tiring when you're given an idea for planning that you think is good just for it to be disproven in the next paragraph.

There are actual solutions throughout the books though they're a minority. How to improve the NHS comes to mind. There's a long chapter explaining the history and failures of the NHS due though about 3 pages that explains how it can be planned and democratized though provides not enough detail in my opinion. That was one of the parts more difficult to understand because he didn't elaborate on it like he does for other topics.

He gives a solid idea of how to plan an economy in chapter 10 though. Unfortunately it's one of the shortest chapters and discusses mostly the history of Cybersyn but it does go into decent depth of how it works and how we could use it to plan a modern economy along with how it helped Chile through a tough economic period.

This is overall a decent book though could be a lot better if it changed the title or actually talked in depth about how Walmart was a planned economy. Also we could definitely use more solutions and more in depth explanations of how planning would work. But if you'd like to know a bit more about planning, how it works, how democracy is integral to it and how it can fail when used incorrectly this is definitely the book for you.

[An Seachránaí · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting topic but this book feels like an article pulled by the ankles and wrists to stretch it out when there was plenty of space to dive into details.
Also filled with Trotskyist nonsense often rather than staying on topic

[Jody Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

More useful as a bibliography than a book on its own. It's given me many interesting avenues to research along, but the arguments in the book are incompletely formed and it leaves something to be desired theoretically and certainly historically. There is a glaring lack of citations in much of the discussion of the USSR, which amounts to a groveling tribute to the US propaganda machine against the same. The discussion of the calculation debate is frustratingly incomplete on a subject I would like to understand better. The discussion of Allende just makes me want to read the text cited at the beginning of that chapter. The relationship of value and use-value and the relation between market and production are never satisfactorily fleshed out, and there seems to be an attempt to mostly avoid directly using Marx's economic analysis even when very applicable. They claim that the market is "amoral" and "directionless" while contradicting themselves by acknowledging that it is profit driven and that the profit motive is a dehumanizing force. They claim that capitalist planning is "not conspiratorial" and that the Allende coup was only with an "implicit nod from Washington". This bizarre insistence on denying the obvious conspiratorial nature of the ruling class which we see frequently in serious (tm) and logical social democrats is frustrating and puzzling. Do they think the government pumps untold sums into the CIA et al for fun? Why would a ruling class so intent on dehumanization of the majority of the world's population not in part use covert means to accomplish their goals?

This text fails theoretically and historically, but still has some value in the citations and in some aspects of the arguments. The (unoriginal) use of corporations in study of planning and disproval of Mises et al certainly is very useful in broaching the subject while avoiding discussing actual socialist countries. This has utility not because we shouldn't uphold real socialist countries (we certainly should) but because it allows us to argue from a common understanding to people who (like these authors) have been deeply brainwashed by US intelligence's successful propaganda against socialism.

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes Some points that Galbraith made in the 1950s (see "New Industrial State") in the post-WWII era that industrial economic planning is not only possible but more crucially part of the standard operating procedure in the rich countries. It is just that Americans, in particular, have been indoctrinated in free-market rugged individualist fantasies of the Austrian School from the 1920s socialist calculation debate. It keeps the average person's eye off the ball (the fact that our economies are rife with industrial planning) and that a real democracy has choices of how to make their economies work for people but unfortunately they are run largely as an ever-narrowing capitalist oligarchy that is as centralized as anything in the fevered nightmares of anticommunist firebrands. Wake up you been sold a bill of goods.

Galbraiths Economic work (more qualitative) New Industrial State.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

More technical work on Operations Research but if you want to get into the details of how logistics happen a book like this can help in building a social democratic utopia that actually works there are loads of these books out there find one compatible with your reading style. I picked this one on a wild guess.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...

Chapo Trap House for normal people. Capitalism where competition is ruinous, destructive, inefficient but makes a few people billionaires. A very interesting rebuttal to the calculation debate of the 1920s that the right thought that it won on paper but lost in practice. The argument is still a bedtime story for the suckers.
https://youtu.be/bjbYzRi8CXE

[Evan Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors of this book dive into the advantages of centrally planned economies over "invisible hand of the market"-style unguided competition.

I agree with many of the ideas presented, especially the idea that the wealth of data available to us now about all stages of the production process means we are able to centrally plan economies with a level of precision unavailable to many in previous socialist projects. I also enjoyed the anecdote about Sears and their failure in implementing "free-market" style thinking within their organization.

My main gripe is that the author's choice of an exemplary attempt of a planned economy was the Allende government of Chile. While many of the decisions he made were admirable, he was in power for only 3 years before the CIA-backed coup led to the end of his life. Meanwhile, the economies of Cuba and China have existed for much longer and are far greater success stories, yet noticeably absent from this book. I would have been interested to hear how the CPC was able to lift 800 million people out of poverty using a centrally planned economy. I would have also been interested to hear how the Cuban government has been able to use central planning to keep its population healthier and better educated than the US despite the decades-long US embargo.

The authors definitely should have included a bibliography as well.