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2018 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

1. Introduction

verfasst von : Benny Carlson

Erschienen in: Swedish Economists in the 1930s Debate on Economic Planning

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

In times of crisis, demand for government action in general and economic planning in particular is sure to surge. The interwar era is a classic example. After the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929, demand for planning—in contrast to capitalist market “anarchy”—was voiced in many quarters. And not only voiced. The 1930s was an era of populism, nationalism, protectionism, government intervention and attempts to create planned economies. With the Great Recession of 2008, structural change due to globalization, waves of migration and impending climate change, a new era of populism, nationalism, protectionism and demand for planning has begun. The ambition of this book is to survey the arguments for and against economic planning as they were put forward by leading Swedish economists in the 1930s and to put these arguments into a context of events and inspirational sources. Developments in Sweden were, according to political scientist Leif Lewin’s classic exposition of the debate on economic planning in Sweden, “something extraordinary also from an international perspective”.

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Nächstes Kapitel The International Context

A summary of these events, and the learning process they entailed, is given in L. Jonung, Looking Ahead Through the Rear-View Mirror: Swedish Stabilisation Policy as a Learning Process 1970–1995 (Stockholm: Ministry of Finance, 2000).

A. Nove, “Planned Economy”, in The New Palgrave: Problems of the Planned Economy, ed. J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, and P. Newman (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), 197.

T. Kowalik, “Central Planning”, in The New Palgrave: Problems of the Planned Economy, ed. J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, and P. Newman (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), 42.

J. Tomlinson, “Planning: Debate and Policy in the 1940s”, Twentieth Century British History 3(2) (1992): 154.

S. Berman, “Populism Is a Problem. Elitist Technocrats Aren’t the Solution”, Foreign Policy, December 20, 2017.

S. Berman, “Against the Technocrats”, Dissent (Winter 2018).

See, e.g., J. Brennan, Against Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

Expositions of arguments for and against economic planning are given in E. Lipson, A Planned Economy or Free Enterprise: The Lessons of History (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1946), and, with some emphasis on regional and city planning, R. E. Klosterman, “Arguments for and Against Planning”, The Town Planning Review 56(1) (1985).

F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 1944). Hayek’s book was immediately translated into Swedish.

A renewed interest in economic planning has, in the Swedish context, been noted in M. Svensson, Vad vi kan lära av planekonomin (Stockholm: Timbro, 2017) and a pretty far-reaching parallel between the 1930s and our own times is drawn in B. Elmbrant, Innan mörkret faller: Ska 30-talet hinna ifatt oss? (Stockholm: Atlas, 2017).

The figures are not fixed once and for all, since digitization is an ongoing effort, but the picture is telling enough.

For an overview of this discussion, see, e.g., B. Carlson, The State as a Monster: Gustav Cassel and Eli Heckscher on the Role and Growth of the State (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994), Chapter 12.

Classic texts on Soviet style central planning by economists like Herbert Levine, Alex Nove, Wassily Leontief, and Robert Campbell are collected in Capitalism, Market Socialism, and Central Planning: Readings in Comparative Economic Systems, ed. W. A. Leeman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963). A comprehensive exposition is given in E. H. Carr and R. W. Davies, A History of Soviet Russia 9–14: Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929 (London: Macmillan, 1969–1978).

For a comparison of Soviet and Nazi planning, see P. Temin, “Soviet and Nazi Economic Planning in the 1930s”, Economic History Review 44(4) (1991): 574. Temin regards these two types of planning as very similar, focused on military mobilization and “prey to the vagaries of large and chaotic bureaucracies”. The main differences were that in the Soviet Union private property was virtually non-existent, the initial level of industrialization was much lower and consumption much more suppressed.

A. Budd, The Politics of Economic Planning (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), 18.

H. Tingsten, Den svenska socialdemokratins utveckling 2 (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Aldus/Bonniers, [1941] 1967), 362.

A couple of years after Tingsten had published his analysis, he fought alongside Eli Heckscher against economic planning.

K.-G. Landgren, Den’nya ekonomien’ i Sverige: J. M. Keynes, E. Wigforss, B. Ohlin och utvecklingen 1927–1939 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1960), 295.

Wigforss himself claimed that the new crisis programme would have been launched even without inspiration from British Liberals. He pointed to socialist ideas in general and discussions within the British labour movement, from the Minority Report to the Poor Law Commission of 1909 to G. D. H. Cole’s articles in The New Statesman in the 1920s. See E. Wigforss, “Den nya ekonomiska politiken”, Ekonomisk Tidskrift 62(3) (1960).

L. Lewin, Planhushållningsdebatten (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1967). The dissertation is in Swedish but there is a separate summary in English: L. Lewin, The Debate on the Planned Economy in Sweden: Summary of the Dissertation “Planhushållningsdebatten” (Uppsala, 1967). My summary, however, departs from the original dissertation in Swedish language. Later on, Lewin took up the theme once more as a chapter in a book on Swedish politics during 100 years, but only dealt with the 1940s debate. See L. Lewin, Ideology and Strategy: A Century of Swedish Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

In his memoirs, Ohlin was very critical of Lewin’s lumping together of Conservatives and Liberals in a “bourgeois” camp. This is not surprising, given that Ohlin himself was a Liberal, non-socialist planning advocate. See B. Ohlin, Ung man blir politiker (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1972).

Lewin, Planhushållningsdebatten, 74.

Tingsten objected that the Social Democrats had freed themselves from Marxist fatalism already at the end of WWI and he called the idea that they followed in Keynes’ footsteps since they had followed in those of Marx arbitrary. See H. Tingsten, “Socialisering och planhushållning”, Tiden 59(8) (1967). Lewin naturally defended his position in L. Lewin, “Ideologi och ekonomi”, Tiden 59(10) (1967). A lengthy critique by Diane Sainsbury was countered by Lewin in a damning rejoinder. See D. Sainsbury, “A Critique of Leif Lewin’s Planhushållningsdebatten”, Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 71(2) (1968); and L. Lewin, “Kritisk traditionsförmedling: Ett genmäle”, Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 72(1) (1969). We need not recount these arguments. We can just note that there is no doubt whatsoever about the fact that a lively debate on economic planning erupted in the early 1930s (see Fig. 1.1), just as claimed and told by Lewin.

Lewin, Planhushållningsdebatten, 95–96.

K. Wickman, Makroekonomisk planering—orsaker och utveckling (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1980).

Myrdal went through the same kind of re-orientation as Wigforss. “The emphasis upon planning rather than nationalization came to play an increasingly important role in Gunnar Myrdal’s vision of social democracy”, writes T. Tilton, “Gunnar Myrdal and the Swedish Model”, in Gunnar Myrdal and His Works, ed. G. Dostaler, D. Ethier, and L. Lepage (Montreal: Harvest House, 1992), 33.

Lewin, Planhushållningsdebatten, 271.

K. Wickman, “Eli Heckscher—pionjär utan efterföljare”, in E. Heckscher, Om staten, liberalismen och den ekonomiska politiken; texter i urval av Kurt Wickman (Stockholm: Timbro, 2000), 41.

Berman, S. “Populism Is a Problem. Elitist Technocrats Aren’t the Solution”. Foreign Policy, December 20, 2017. http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/20/populism-is-a-problem-elitist-technocrats-arent-the-solution.

Berman, S. “Against the Technocrats”. Dissent (Winter 2018). https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/against-technocrats-liberal-democracy-history.

Brennan, J. Against Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Budd, A. The Politics of Economic Planning. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978.

Carlson, B. The State as a Monster: Gustav Cassel and Eli Heckscher on the Role and Growth of the State. Lanham: University Press of America, 1994.

Carr, E. H., and R. W. Davies. A History of Soviet Russia 9–14: Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929. London: Macmillan, 1969–1978.

Elmbrant, B. Innan mörkret faller: Ska 30-talet hinna ifatt oss? Stockholm: Atlas, 2017.

Hayek, F. A. von. The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge, 1944.

Jonung, L. Looking Ahead Through the Rear-View Mirror: Swedish Stabilisation Policy as a Learning Process 1970–1995. Stockholm: Ministry of Finance, 2000.

Klosterman, R. E. “Arguments for and Against Planning”. The Town Planning Review 56(1) (1985): 5–20.CrossRef

Kowalik, T. “Central Planning”. In The New Palgrave: Problems of the Planned Economy, edited by J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, and P. Newman, 42–50. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990.

Landgren, K.-G. Den’nya ekonomien’ i Sverige: J. M. Keynes, E. Wigforss, B. Ohlin och utvecklingen 1927–1939. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1960.

Leeman, W. A. (ed.). Capitalism, Market Socialism and Central Planning: Readings in Comparative Economic Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963.

Lewin, L. “Ideologi och ekonomi”. Tiden 59(10) (1967): 616–628.

Lewin, L. Planhushållningsdebatten. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1967.

Lewin, L. The Debate on the Planned Economy in Sweden: Summary of the Dissertation “Planhushållningsdebatten”. Uppsala (No Publisher/Printer Stated), 1967.

Lewin, L. “Kritisk traditionsförmedling: Ett genmäle”. Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 72(1) (1969): 21–42.

Lewin, L. Ideology and Strategy: A Century of Swedish Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Lipson, E. A Planned Economy or Free Enterprise: The Lessons of History. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1946.

Nove, A. “Planned Economy”. In The New Palgrave: Problems of the Planned Economy, edited by J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, and P. Newman, 186–197. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990.

Ohlin, B. Ung man blir politiker. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1972.

Sainsbury, D. “A Critique of Leif Lewin’s Planhushållningsdebatten”. Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 71(2) (1968): 109–125.

Svensson, M. Vad vi kan lära av planekonomin. Stockholm: Timbro, 2017.

Temin, P. “Soviet and Nazi Economic Planning in the 1930s”. Economic History Review 44(4) (1991): 573–593.CrossRef

Tilton, T. “Gunnar Myrdal and the Swedish Model”. In Gunnar Myrdal and His Works, edited by G. Dostaler, D. Ethier, and L. Lepage, 13–36. Montreal: Harvest House, 1992.

Tingsten, H. Den svenska socialdemokratins utveckling 2. Stockholm: Bokförlaget Aldus/Bonniers, [1941] 1967.

Tingsten, H. “Socialisering och planhushållning”. Tiden 59(8) (1967): 463–476.

Tomlinson, J. “Planning: Debate and Policy in the 1940s”. Twentieth Century British History 3(2) (1992): 154–174.CrossRef

Wickman, K. Makroekonomisk planering—orsaker och utveckling. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1980.

Wickman, K. “Eli Heckscher—pionjär utan efterföljare”. In Heckscher, E., Om staten, liberalismen och den ekonomiska politiken: Texter i urval av Kurt Wickman, 11–52. Stockholm: Timbro, 2000.

Wigforss, E. “Den nya ekonomiska politiken”. Ekonomisk Tidskrift 62(3) (1960): 185–194.CrossRef

Titel: Introduction
verfasst von: Benny Carlson
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: Swedish Economists in the 1930s Debate on Economic Planning
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03699-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-03700-0

Copyright-Jahr: 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03700-0_1