On Ljunggren’s ‘Plan and Market’

Sten Ljunggren is worried both by our general proposals for direct democracy and by our advocacy of a system of central planning. This response is in five sections. The first puts the debate into the context of what we see as the key features of the communist mode of production. The second deals with the question of control theory, and replies to Ljunggren’s doubts about the use of computer models in planning. The third section puts forward our critique of market socialism and the fourth responds to Ljunggren’s argument that a planning system cannot be as flexible as the market since it supposedly cannot replicate the horizontal links between enterprises found in market systems. The final section points out the differences between our conceptions and the planning mechanisms in the former Soviet Union, responding to Ljunggren’s claim that there is not much new in our economic ideas.