The Grounds of Planning PART II: Aaron Benanav on Utopia, Socialism, and Rationality

Should we be making recipes for the cook shops of the future? In part two of this series on planning, Jacob Blumenfeld speaks with Aaron Benanav about utopian thinking, economic rationality, and what it might actually mean to plan beyond capitalism. Moving between Marx, critical theory, and the history of utopian socialism, the conversation returns to figures like Thomas More, Edward Bellamy, and William Morris to ask what utopias do for political imagination—and where they fall short. Benanav argues that although one should not concoct too rigid a blueprint for the future, it is worse to have no plan at all. Instead, he outlines the idea of a multi-criterial economy: an economy that recognizes that economic decisions involve multiple, often conflicting values—autonomy, sustainability, efficiency, care, for instance—and cannot be reduced to a single metric like money or utility; they are intrinsically political choices. The episode takes up concrete questions that utopian debates often avoid: trade-offs, investment, transition, and implementation. How are priorities set? Who decides? What role should money play, if any? And how can democratic decision-making function under conditions of uncertainty and disagreement, without collapsing into technocracy or abstract moralism? Against neoclassical economics and rational choice theory, Benanav insists that rationality is not about finding the “optimal” solution, but about collectively negotiating priorities in a world of limits. Utopia reappears here not as a final destination, but as a critical tool—helping us think about feasibility, coordination, and political choice without pretending that conflicts can be engineered away. Special thanks to JÜRG MEISTER (recording, editing, editorial support, mixing, mastering)