Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 21:12:33 +0100 From: "Scott Martens" Subject: Re: Science, Science & Marxism
Nor is it as if planning was ever very centralised under alternative economic structures. Nothing I've ever read about planning in the USSR suggests that the centre even tried to micromanage the economy in the way Hayek and Mises seem to think they did. *******************************
No, this ain't right. Soviet planning before the 1960s was a nightmare. It wasn't even proper "planning" in the sense meant by the advocates of planning today. The science of linear programming (a vital component of any planned economy) was invented at the Economic Mathematical Institute in Moscow by Kantorovich et al, but they were bloody lucky to sta out of the camps for inventing it.
Stalin in particular had theoretical objections to "economic cybernetics" (optimal planning) as being against his interpretation of Marxism/Leninism. He wanted the planned economy to operate on the basis of political economy without interference by technocrats. So although Mises and Hayek intended their objections to planning to be effective against all kinds of investment planning (thus probably overextending their arguments), the form of planning used in the Soviet Union up until the 1960s was a particularly pernicious kind, completely different from the kind of plans drawn up by large corporations and much more amenable to critique.
Also NB that it wasn't possible even in principle to have an optimally planned economy before about 1928, as the mathematics hadn't been invented.
And finally, that the economic cyberneticians certainly believed that something like market prices in goods markets were necessary to the design of an optimal plan. Indeed, as I've noted before, they reproduced almost all the results in Samuelson's book without using the von Neumann/Morgenstern axioms about human behaviour.
dd
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