IS WALMART A SECRET SOCIALIST PLOT ?

"[B]eneath the threadbare cliché of the maxim that socialism is 'fine in theory, but impossible in practice,' there in fact lie claims about economic planning, and about how to calculate an egalitarian distribution of goods and services without need for markets. ... Walmart ... offer[s] powerful encouragement to the socialist hypothesis that a planned economy—this time democratically coordinated by ordinary working people, rather than by bureaucrats or bosses—is not merely feasible, but more efficient than the market."

In our last episode, we touched on issues of economic planning and the "socialist calculation debate". Let's follow up by exploring some ideas brought up in the 2019 book "The People's Republic of Walmart" by Phillips and Rozworski (which longtime Fellow Travelers may recall from our "Project CyberSyn" event).

Choose your poison from the offerings below, feeling free to mix and match and to check out only as little/much as you like (but even if you don't check it out at all, just join us anyway):

Text :

• "COULD WALMART BE A SECRET SOCIALIST PLOT?" by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski (2019; Chapter 2 from The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism; 20 pages) *** LINK TO PDF TEXT WILL BE SHARED IN THE GROUP CHAT ***

Video / Audio :

• The People's Republic of Walmart | Interview with Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski from Novara Media (46 minutes)