Yeah. I think theyāve worked pretty well in the past. Others have mentioned the USSR already, but the UK was pretty quick to adopt central planning for farmers when they needed to massively boost food production during the war. I donāt usually link to videos, but thereās a great edutainment program that covers it in a lot of detail. I highly recommend it! The farmers initially didnāt like it, but by the end of the war, they definitely had an appreciation for it, and you canāt argue with the results.
Thereās also been the argument that Walmart is one big centrally planned economy in and of itself. Sears on the other hand infamously tried to implement a free market internally.
EDIT: Damnit, I took too long to write this and all of this has now been covered. Oh well, I like my links.
EDIT2: Damnit, his instance blocks us anyway.
My opinion on this is a little complicated. The classic definition of Socialism is a system of production for social good, where the banks, factories, and industries are publicly owned and run for the betterment of society; as opposed to being privately owned and run for profit, and production organized to serve the profit motive under Capitalism. This implies on its surface that a centrally planned economy is socialist, while a market economy is capitalist, but things get messier than that in the real world. State Capitalist countries like South Korea, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia had centrally planned economies for decades, but they ran them for the purpose of building successful capitalist economies.
And no Socialist country has been purely planned- even the Soviet Union allowed farmers to sell food from their private plots at prices that the farmers chose. In the aftermath of World War 2, returning Soviet veterans often combined their savings to build cooperative factories that produced needed products, like consumer goods. The workers often elected a chairman of the factory, and paid him a much larger salary because they valued their leadership, or because he had the idea. These cooperatives were later nationalized by Khruschev, almost certainly to the detriment of the Soviet economy. When the cooperative sector of the Soviet economy was nationalized, economic planning became extremely complicated, and a lot of āgrey market/second economyā behaviors popped up, like factories hitting their quotas early and continuing to produce goods to sell at their own prices on an unofficial market. In the end, the Soviet economy consistently struggled to meet the demand for consumer goods, which it might not have done if Khruschev hadnāt nationalized the cooperatives. I could go on and talk about the success China has had since it pivoted to a mixed economy with a big market sector, starting with their success with the Household Responsibility System, but I donāt want to ramble any more. My overall point is that centrally planned economies can accomplish a lot of impressive things, but having the state own every single little business can cause problems. I think a mixed economy can work well under Socialism. Personally, I like the idea of using what Richard Wolff calls Workersā Self-Directed Enterprises for sections of the economy that might not work well under planning. I also think a company like Huawei provides a potential model for how worker-owned companies in a market sector might be run under socialism.
Of course, everything I just said about the Soviet economy occurred in an era before supercomputers, so who knows if a similar economy would run into the same problems today.
I have a lot of questions for you, are you perchance on the Matrix chat? Iām @bizzle420:matrix.org
Sure.
Youāve probably been told all your life āCentrally planned economies donāt work! Theyāve always been a catastrophic failure!ā which is simply untrue.
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the USSR industrialised at record pace, went from a backwards joke that was jealous of its Western neighbours to the undisputed 2nd-most-powerful country in the world, launched mankind into space, defeated Hitler, electrified and industrialised the whole country
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unplanned economies have been disasters: Russia under shock therapy in the 1990s. Thatcher closing down coalmines, GW Bush (and Greenspan) deregulating everything and causing the biggest financial crash in 80 years
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Look at the history of Britainās economy, did great under planning with people like Clement Attlee, worse when the free-market ideology took hold: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=iH6ur0X4wMI (you should watch the whole thing, but from 14:20 has a bit on Britainās planned economy). War economies are often centrally planned and do in-kind accounting, and war economies stimulate growth.
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look at how much better China and Vietnam perform at growth and poverty-alleviation than Friedmanite countries
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The boring āWalmartā argument: there are already massive country-sized planned economies with in-kind accounting. Called Amazon and Walmart. Amazon runs an economy the size of Australia (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-tech-giants-worth-compared-economies-countries/) and does it by databases that manage supply-chains, logistics, just-in-time ordering, modelling future demand, etc.
Two caveats ā
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Marxists donāt ābelieve inā doing things a certain way, thatās Utopianism. Marxists believe in practice. Various things work at various times in various doses. That includes market mechanisms, like the Chinese economy today, or Vietnam with its Äį»i Mį»i policy. Giving a template and demanding it be followed is anathema to āscientific socialismā
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Marxism ā centrally planned economies. Marx mostly critiqued how capital was a means of exploitation, and said lets do āsomething elseā that doesnāt rip workers off so much. That leaves room for a lot of noncentrallyplanned methods. Which one is best? A stupid smallminded question. Like asking which food is the best food to eat, or which medicine is the best medicine to take. Depends on the context.
You may say you donāt believe in centrally planned economies. Do you believe in a centrally planned economy to provide tap water? If it works for tap water, why not for other things? It works for public housing too. It works for transport infrastructure. It works for railways. Why is it such a stretch to think that what you probably already believe in for water, railways, roads, education, housing could also run some clothing and furniture factories?
This was kinda written in a hurry, I can add references or answer questions if needed.
Do you believe in a centrally planned economy to provide tap water? If it works for tap water, why not for other things? It works for public housing too. It works for transport infrastructure. It works for railways. Why is it such a stretch to think that what you probably already believe in for water, railways, roads, education, housing could also run some clothing and furniture factories?
What about the worry of corruption with the central authority?
Corruption is a real concern. No country in the world is free of corruption. Reducing it to the most minimal level requires a multi-pronged approach, including paying civil servants decently, setting a good culture, having oversight where people check other peopleās work (anonymously to avoid intimidation or collusion) and lots of other things. Itās not a simple fix.
Corruption is not a curse that is particular to the public-sector. Economies with private ownership are also prone to corruption: Lehman Brothers, Enron, etc.
Nobody ever talks about corruption in the private sector, and Iām glad you did.
I donāt actually know much about day to day life in Vietnam, are their poverty numbers especially low? Iād love to do more research on that.
I think my biggest problem with central economic planning is it seems to take away a lot of perspective, where the people doing the planning might not have a super great understanding of what the people might need on the other side of the country. Does that make sense?
Iām a union autoworker when Iām not weed farming, I actually got quoted a few times by the WSWS in their coverage of my factoryās strike which was a really cool experience. I consider myself a socialist, even. I just think demand driven economics makes more sense to me. Iād love to get persuaded though.
I think itās important to note that there can be all kinds of planned economies, including capitalist ones even, and ways of doing planning. I (and I would imagine a lot if other Marxists) are in favor of an economy planned according to democratic centralism. Everyone would be contributing in some way to the planning. In Marxist planned economies, it isnāt the top dictating to the bottom. Itās from the bottom to the top and the top to the bottom. An economy run on the mass line
ācentrally plannedā doesnāt mean ānot demand drivenā
I donāt actually know much about day to day life in Vietnam, are their poverty numbers especially low? Iād love to do more research on that.