Charles Brown
>>> "Michael Hoover" <hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us> 08/26/99 05:13PM >>>
Planning discussion has been too abstract for prosaic me but then I
take it that intellectualism is opiate of intellectuals rather than
marxism as Raymond Aron claimed.
1. Soviet central planning generally eliminated long-term secular unemployment and short-term cyclical unemployment associated with capitalist business cycles from the 1920 onwards. While elimination of mass unemployment was, in part, the result of extensive industrial growth, Soviets and other 'actually-existing' socialist states provided job security that was perceived as positive achievement and cannot be lightly dismissed nor should it be sacrificed as a valued goal. (my utopian self prefers a post-work society but that's for another post). Doing away with generalized unemployment gave working people confidence and encouragment to develop abilities and talents.
Of course, critics asserted that the type of security existing in these economies, over time, undermined work discipline and failed to provide incentives for efficient and diligent work. And some people couldn't find kind of employment for which they were trained because of planning errors or geographical preferences (Soviet's had hard time getting highly skilled folks to go to frigid climare and barren landscape of Far North). A bit of frictional unemployment (i.e., people changing jobs and 'layabouts') also existed.
In the main, however, central planning eliminated mass chronic unemployment as a social problem. There was nothing comparable to working-class districts in capitalist societies where jobless line sidewalks, hanging out in summer and winter, in good years and in bad, a constant feature of the social landscape.
2. Yugoslav 'market socialism' provided for worker participation in a decentralized economy, availibility of Western-style consumer goods (and development of Western-style consumerism among more affluent social groups and economic regions; i.e., Slovenia & Croatia, the first to 'secede'), room for small private business and agriculture, and market-oriented price and wages systems.
Costs of above included mass unemployment (up to 15% in 1980s, figure would have been higher except for migration of 'guest workers' to West Germany, Sweden, & Switzerland), chronic inflation, and foreign debt. Unskilled working class and poor regions bore brunt of jobless- ness, exacerbating already existing inequalities among social strata and ethnic groups.
Opponents of central planning must consider that the return of large- scale unemployment is a large price for dropping that planning capacity of the political system. Michael Hoover