Pat Devine

Who is Pat Devine?

Pat Devine is a radical economist concerned mainly with industrial economics and comparative economic systems. He made one of the most thorough descriptions of a future economy where allocation is done by democratic planning and social ownership without any social division of labour. The model is notable for specifying an array of social ownership rights, and an analytic distinction between "market forces" and "market relations". Another key aspect of Devine’s work has been a close reading of the economic calculation debate, and later attempts to offer a serious response to the objections by the Austrian school of economic theory. Similarly, Devine’s work on the subject of “industrial planning” has largely constituted an extended critique of the Austrian theory of entrepreneurship. In this vein Devine has argued that "a major weakness in the modern Austrian School's emphasis on the need for tacit knowledge to be socially mobilised by entrepreneurs participating in the market process is that participation is restricted to those with access to capital, thus ignoring the tacit knowledge of the majority of people."