Theoretical Approaches

Having now discussed some of the salient issues that arise from Britain’s past forays into the field of economic planning, as well as the experience of several other countries, we have reached a point where it would be useful to examine planning in more theoretical terms. This is done in this chapter and the next, in order to provide a firm basis for the more concrete proposals relating to a possible planning structure for the British economy which are presented in Chapters 6 and 7. While Chapter 5 deals with what is really the political dimension of planning (forms of workers’ participation, and related issues), the present chapter confines itself to the economic aspects of planning. Naturally, it would be absurd to suggest that economic and political aspects could ever be fully separated in practice. Thus although a formal separation is convenient for expositional purposes, these two theoretical chapters should be read as a whole.