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

Written by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski

Narrated by Eric Jason Martin

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Aug 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781515948919

Leigh Phillips

Leigh Phillips is a science and EU affairs journalist who writes for Nature, the Guardian, the New Statesman, and Jacobin.

Reviews for The People's Republic of Walmart

[Viktoriya · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ties the premise and the history together quite nicely - lots of interesting, in-depth examples, very informative and well-narrated.

[Adam the Third · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Where's the 7 star button? Fantastic book, author, and reader.

Delightful voice, excellent pace, and wonderful lessons.

[William Ward · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Planning at a large scale is feasible, in fact most capitalist orgs use it internally. This book does a great job discussing how the infrastructure that already exists can be leveraged to build a socialist planning system that is distributed and democratic.

[gradenko_2000 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book lays out the case that economic planning is a feasible approach to running an economic, on the basis that corporations use economic planning in its internal workings. Clear and concise, with a vibrant background on the basic points and a strong build-up to a polemic case for socialism.

[marthajeanne · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The book starts out well. The first chapters are quite interesting. But eventually the authors become more interested in their ideology than in how to make planning work. Their plan for a better future is based on

taxing the rich
lots of nuclear energy and hydroelectric energy
no fossil fuels
global planning

Even they admit that this not going to suddenly just happen. I'm not sure how they get the view that nuclear and hydroelectric energy are cheap and clean and carbon neutral. This does not agree with other opinions I have read. Nuclear isn't viable until uranium mining is cleaned up and long term storage of radioactive materials has been solved. Hydroelectricity in its current form is very disruptive of the river ecosystems. Sunken forests also release large amounts of CO2 and methane. Just calling these technologies clean and ignoring the problems involved is irresponsible.

What would be interesting would be a study of what could actually work now. This book doesn't do it.