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William Paul Cockshott
Born	(1952-03-16)16 March 1952 (age 73) Edinburgh,Scotland,United Kingdom
Alma mater	Manchester University(BaEcon) Heriot Watt University(MSc) Edinburgh University(PhD)
Scientific career
Fields	Computer science Marxian economics
Institutions	University of Glasgow
Website	paulcockshott.wordpress.com

William Paul Cockshott (born 16 March 1952) is a Scottish academic in the fields ofcomputer science andMarxist economics. He is a Reader at theUniversity of Glasgow. Since 1993, he has authored multiple works in the tradition ofscientific socialism, most notablyTowards a New Socialism andHow the World Works. Cockshott advocates for amoneyless economy and the use of computers to aid aplanned economy.

Cockshott earned aBA in economics (1974) fromManchester University, anMSc (1976) in computer science fromHeriot Watt University and aPhD in computer science fromEdinburgh University (1982).^[1]

He has made contributions in the fields ofimage compression,3D television, parallelcompilers andmedical imaging, but became known to a wider audience for his proposals in the multi-disciplinary area ofeconomic computability, most notably as co-author, along theeconomistAllin F. Cottrell [de], of the bookTowards a New Socialism, in which they strongly advocate the use ofcybernetics for efficient and democratic planning of a complex socialist economy.^[2]

He proposes a moneyless socialist economy, akin toKarl Marx's description of a socialist society inCritique of the Gotha Programme, realized by today's computer technology:

In our proposal people would be paid not in money but with nontransferable electronic work accounts. Purchases would be made with smart cards as they are today, but with the difference that the only way people could accumulate work credits would be by actually working. The more hours you work the more credits you get. Goods in the shops would then be priced in hours, and the exchange principle is basically one for one. For one hour of work you get goods that took one hour to make.

In the 1970s, Cockshott was a member of theBritish and Irish Communist Organisation (B&ICO), but he and several other members became unhappy with B&ICO's position onworkers' control, claiming that it promoted power over the proletariat at their workplace rather than giving power to the proletariat.^[4] Cockshott and several other B&ICO members resigned and formed a new party, theCommunist Organisation in the British Isles, until its dissolution in 1980.^[4]

Cockshott advocates for a system of amoneyless economy based on a computerizedplanned economy anddirect democracy.^[2] He has criticized theeconomic calculation problem on the grounds that planning can be made feasible via computerization and allocation based onlabor time.^[2][5]

• Cockshott, W. P. (1990).Ps-Algol Implementations: Applications in Persistent Object Oriented Programming, Ellis Horwood Ltd.ISBN 978-0745808277
• Cockshott, W. P. (1990).A Compiler Writer's Toolbox: Interactive Compilers for PCs With Turbo Pascal, Ellis Horwood Ltd.ISBN 978-0131737907
• Cockshott, W. P., Cottrell, A. (1993).Towards a New Socialism, Spokesman.ISBN 978-0851245454
• Cockshott, W. P., Renfrew K. (2004).SIMD Programming Manual for Linux and Windows, Springer.ISBN 978-1852337940
• Cockshott, W. P. (2010).Transition to 21st Century Socialism in the European Union, Lulu.ISBN 978-1445715070
• Cockshott, W. P. (2011).Glasgow Pascal Compiler with vector extensions, Lulu.ISBN 978-1447761563
• Cockshott, W. P., Zachariah, D. (2012).Arguments for Socialism, Lulu.ISBN 978-1471658945
• Cockshott, W. P., Cottrell, A., Michaelson, G., Wright, I., Yakovenko, V. (2012).Classical Econophysics, Routledge.ISBN 978-0415696463
• Cockshott, W. P., Mackenzie, L., Michaelson, G. (2015).Computation and its Limits, Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0198729129
• Cockshott, W. P., Nieto, M. (2017).Ciber-Comunismo Planificación Económica, Computadoras Y Democracia, Editorial Trotta.ISBN 978-84-9879-721-3
• Cockshott, W. P. (2019).How the World Works: The Story of Human Labor from Prehistory to the Modern Day,Monthly Review Press.ISBN 978-1-58367-777-3
• Cockshott, W. P., Dapprich J. P., Cottrell A. (2022).Economic Planning in an Age of Climate Crisis, self-published.ISBN 979-8357728739
• Cockshott, W. P., Kolozova K., Michaelson G. (2024).Defending Materialism: The Uneasy History of the Atom in Science and Philosophy, Bloomsbury Publishing.ISBN 9781350447349

• Paul Cockshott's YouTube channel
• Paul Cockshott's blog
• "Paul Cockshott - Towards a new Socialism (1/3)". Video produced by Oliver Ressler on Paul Cockshott and his planned economy-model.TranscriptionArchived 26 February 2018 at theWayback Machine of a video by O. Ressler, recorded in Glasgow, GB, 25 min., 2006
• Towards a new socialism, complete book download.
• Len Brewster on "Towards a new Socialism? by W. Paul Cockshott and Allin F. Cottrell. (Nottingham, U.K.: Spokesman Books, 1993)", Review Essay,The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Vol.7, No.1 (Spring 2004): 65–77.; Paul Cockshott,"Notes for a critique of Brewster" (20 June 2009).

• Living people
• Scottish computer scientists
• 1952 births
• Marxist theorists
• People from Edinburgh
• Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
• Academics of the University of Glasgow
• Marxian economists
• Socialist economists

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