Participatory Economics

An economic vision outlined by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, leftist economic theorists.

Participatory Economics, or Parecon, strives to allow maximum democratic control over a society's economy for the benefit of all involved. Parecon stands in opposition to capitalism by requiring cooperation and (as the name suggests) active participation instead of cutthroat competition coupled with consumer passivity.

Michael Albert outlines the following "broad goals", or features, of Participatory Economics (quoted and/or paraphrased directly from Thinking Forward):

• Equity - Fair or just outcomes. No one should get more of a good thing or of a bad thing than he or she deserves.
• Solidarity - The economy should foster empathy, mutual respect and caring among people.
• Diversity - Homogeneity is boring and we all benefit from diverse outcomes.
• Participatory Self-Management - In group decision making, each person should have a say weighted in proportion to how much or how little he or she is affected by the decision.
• Efficiency - The economic functions of production, consumption and allocation should be carried out in light of people's preferences and capacities to attain these broader aims, and without waste.
• Classlessness - Class division reduces equity, curtails solidarity, reduces diversity, limits self-management, and introduces various inefficiencies.

The details as to what an economic system embodying these ideals would look like are open to debate, and debate is encouraged.

Just to give maybe a bit more detailed as well as little different description of Participatory Economy which is mainly based on Jaroslav Vanek's book with the same name..

I'd like to call it market socialism without pointing to leninist thatcherism practiced in China by CCP. Vanek's system has a lots of similarities with these principles in other node but I think it's worthy to write them down:

Economic democracy and self-management:  The general assembly of working community (factory, office..) has the highest authority. In the general assembly every worker has one vote and can equally participate in decision making process. The assembly may choose executive board which can be changed at any time by the majority of workers.

Equity:  There are some examples of worker-run enterprises and salaries tend to differ between 1:3 - 1:5. The distribution of income is decided in general assembly.

Markets:  This economic system is essentially market economy. The major diffenrence with capitalism is that the first goal is not to maximize profit or return of investment but wellbeing of workers.

Efficiency:  Participatory economy has all incentives of capitalism and it has also some additional ones. Workers tend to be more motivated.

Growth:  Because self-managed enterprise tries to maximize the income of workers it doesn't have same incentives to grow and relies more on principle live and let live and therefore there are no such trend of monopolization as in capitalism.

These facts all together will be enough to transform some fundamental functions of capitalism. Mostly these lead us to social benefits but also makes it for self-managed enterprises harder to penetrate into capitalist sphere (limits of growth and institutions of capitalism).