Planning and Freedom

Abstract

When Sir Stafford Cripps declared in the House of Commons on February 28, 1946, that no country in the world has yet succeeded in carrying through a planned economy without compulsion of labour, he might, with equal truth, have gone much further and admitted that no planned economy has yet operated without suppressing free speech, destroying representative government, robbing the consumer of free choice and virtually abolishing private property. This is no accident. It cannot be attributed to fortuitous events such as the wickedness of the men in whom the economic power came to be vested or the absence of an instinct for freedom on the part of the people who were the victims of the plan. It is due to the logical incompatibility of a planned economy and freedom for the individual.¹ For the various strands of personal liberty — economic, political and social — are bound together. Weaken or destroy one and the whole rope inevitably snaps.