Pacific Index

Issue date: 4/11/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Duncan McGregor Hahnel's was the second annual In Your Face lecture here at Pacific.

Noted political economist Robin Hahnel lectured the Pacific community about the current political situation in Venezuela April 9 in Taylor Auditorium.

His lecture was titled "21st Century Socialism in Venezuela: What's the Deal?" and was the second annual In Your Face lecture.

According to Hahnel, Venezuela has all of the components of a participatory economy in place, including worker cooperatives, participatory budgeting and communal assemblies.

In the past two years, Hahnel has visited Venezuela twice, once in Oct. 2006 and once in July 2007.

He was invited to work with the Centro Internacional Miranda and to speak at both the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry for the Communal Economy.

While in Venezuela, Hahnel participated in discussions concerning new models of socialism for the twenty-first century, participatory budgeting, new forms of political participation and human development through popular participation.

He credits the invitation to his research interest in fostering and ensuring participation in economic planning.

Hahnel is the co-creator of "participatory economics," an alternative economic system to capitalism.

His economic system employs participatory decision making to drive the economy within society.

In other words, such planning determines the production, consumption and allocation of resources.

Robin Hahnel is a Professor of Economics at American University in Washington, D.C. He is currently a visiting professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland.

The event was sponsored by the Anthropology/Sociology Club and the Politics and Government Department.

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