On 19th January 2026, Aaron Benanav gave a talk at Utrecht University as part of the Visions for the Future project’s speaker series, where Aaron outlined his proposal for a multicriterial socialism.
A summary of the talk (from the description of the video) can be found below:
This talk presents an alternative socio-economic system—what I call a multidimensional economy—grounded in the premise that modern societies pursue multiple, irreducible goals that cannot be collapsed into a single universal equivalent without distortion. At its core is a set of democratically governed investment bodies that allocate resources across competing social priorities—such as decarbonization, improving care infrastructures, technological development, and raising work quality—under explicit budget constraints. Firms operate not as profit-maximizing entities but as worker-run organizations. Markets continue to play a role in coordinating production and consumption, but their outcomes are politically mediated through investment decisions that shape the direction of economic development. Rather than promising social harmony, this system treats conflict over economic futures as unavoidable and productive. It starts from the view that societies committed to multiple social and ecological values require economic structures capable of surfacing conflicts among these goals and providing legitimate ways of deciding among them. The multidimensional economy is designed to make such trade-offs visible, contestable, and collectively binding. The talk outlines the key components of this system and argues for its viability as a distinct alternative to both market-centered and technocratic planning models.
You can watch the talk here.