‘Planning’—Ah! Magic Word

February 14, 1949

Few speeches of Mr. Truman’s have revealed as much confusion of thought as his plea before the National Planning Association for a planned economy. He began by making a distinction, which he did not clarify, between a “planned” economy and a “controlled” economy. He implied that a “controlled” economy was totalitarian but a “planned” economy was democratic and free. The distinction is, in fact, purely verbal and semantic. Fundamentally government planning and government control are two words for the same thing. If anything, “control” implies less government in the economy than “planning.”

“I have been interested in planning,” said Mr. Truman, “all my life . . . ever since I was old enough to understand what the word meant. You know that we plan our day’s work. We plan the houses in which we are going to live. . . . But when we talk about planning the things we want to do economically we are charged with being Communists and fellow travelers.”

The italics are mine. They call attention to the fact, of which Mr. Truman seems blissfully unaware, that the “we” in his last sentence is a radically different “we” from that in his preceding sentences. When he says that “we” plan our day’s work or our houses, he means that each of us plans his own day’s work or his own house. When he talks about planning the things “we” want to do economically he means the things that the government wants to do—the things that he wants to do.

In making a false distinction Mr. Truman misses the real and vital one. The distinction is not at all between what we want to do “economically” and what we want to do in other ways. To plan your own day’s work or your own house is to plan economically. Nor is the real distinction one between planning and not planning—though it is this confusion that the government planners have chiefly exploited. The real question involved is whose planning.

Who is to plan and for whom? Is each of us to be allowed to plan his own day’s work? Or are bureaucrats to plan it for him? Is each of 2,000,000 large and small business managers to decide what product he is going to make, and how much of it, and how? Or is the government (in the person, say, of Secretary Sawyer) going to tell each of them what to make, and how much of it, and in what way, and at what price? Is each of 6,000,000 farm operators to decide what he shall plant and how much? Or is Secretary Brannan going to tell him? Is each worker going to be allowed to work where be pleases? Or will Secretary Tobin direct labor? Is each consumer going to buy what he wants? Or only what some bureaucrat thinks is good for him?

Anyone who thinks these questions are not real need look no farther than England, where the government decides (partly on American ECA insistence) how much of each product is to be produced in the next three or four years: what its citizens are permitted to import, and from what country; what prices they are permitted to ask or pay for domestic products or for foreign currencies; where and at what workers may take jobs and how much of what consumers are permitted to buy. That is what is meant by this euphemism “planning.” It is a simple denial of free markets, of free enterprise, of economic freedom.

All this was most compactly stated by the British economist Lionel Robbins in his book The Great Depression, published fifteen years ago; “Socialism is a term which is not universally popular. But ‘planning’—ah! magic word—who would not plan? . . . But if it were to be true to its name, it could not acknowledge the substance of ownership, the right of individual disposal of the actual instruments of production. For ‘planning’ involves central control. And central control excludes the right of individual disposal. Nothing but intellectual confusion can result from a failure to realize that Planning and Socialism are fundamentally the same. Now the leaders of opinion want planning.”