Also, "blueprint" is a metaphor from architecture. Socialist economy is not a building, literally. It is much more complex and a "blueprint" would be inadequate. Nonetheless, within this building metaphor, Marx indicated that the difference between a web built by a spider and what is built with human labor, is that the latter is thought of in imagination first. This in a sense meant planning is a main difference between animal and human productive activity.
The socialist notion of planning is to plan the whole, not individual enterprises. Leaving the productive system as a whole unplanned is literally wild or animal like. The bourgeoisie , rather than the most civilized expression of human history , are its biggest return to the unplanned productive activity of animals.
The notion of leaving production to anarchy or the market or the invisible hand is not the same as the anarchist principle of anti-statism.
Charles Brown
>>> Sam Pawlett <rsp at uniserve.com> 08/17/99 03:10PM >>>
One of the points of socialist blueprints is to answer critics of
socialism who argue for capitalism by saying there is no alternative to
capitalism practically or theoretically, that there is an alternaive
worth fighting for. Blueprints are an antidote to people who say "I
agree with your criticisms, I don't like capitalism much either but what
is the alternative?" or "I fear the alternative would be much worse than
what we have now."
If a blueprint works in theory it must work in practice. If it doesn't work in practice there's something wrong with the theory.
Sam Pawlett