Socialism, Centralised Planning and the One-Party State

Abstract

It is essential to make clear what I am not discussing in the present paper. It will not be concerned with what Marx called ‘communism’ in its higher form. For most of the readers of this paper, the utopian elements of the Marxian tradition may seem merely nonsensical. Yet sizeable groups of far-left intellectuals, in Germany, Italy, Japan, India, and even nearer home, take it seriously and call it socialism. For them socialism is a society in which the state had withered away, there is abundance and equality, there is therefore no conflict over the distribution of goods and services, there is a high general level of education, the division of labour would be transcended, there would be no commanders and no commanded, and no national boundaries, as this harmonious society would cover the entire world. There would, of course, be no commodity production, money, markets, wages, no specialisation or professionalism. While not everyone would be a Raphael, everyone would be able to paint very well.¹ Is it only because of my own inability to draw that I regard this picture as a cloud-cuckoo-land? Anyhow, this paper is concerned with the political implications of centralised planning within a ‘socialism’ defined more realistically as state or social ownership of the bulk of the means of production.