Freedom, State, and Market:The Real Worlds of Economic Planning

The complexity of the real history of economic planning in practice, as well as the variety of rationales that have been offered in theory for various (more or less comprehensive) forms of planning, both suggest that political philosophy would benefit from a more nuanced and less simplistic approach to the discussion of state planning of the economy. The aim of our article is to clear some ground for a discussion of markets and democratic economic planning within normative political philosophy that takes a less stark and dichotomous approach in considering the relationship between markets and state planning, and takes more account of the complexities of both the theory and historical practice of economic planning. The article considers some of the different varieties of democratic economic planning, and the rationales for different forms of imperative and indicative planning regimes, as well as other alternative planning mechanisms. In particular the article looks to bring renewed attention to the theoretical rationales for planning offered by two important theorists of the mixed economy: James Meade and Stuart Holland. We close by revisiting the powerful normative case for economic planning provided by Barbara Wootton, whose rejection of F. A. Hayek’s critique of planning, as well as her positive case for planning on grounds of freedom, democracy, and social equality, deserves to be much better known, and whose work is ripe for reintegration into contemporary normative discussions of social justice and political economy.