Was Marx for central planning?

[MissRed]

I must admit. I haven't read "The Capital". I'm sorry but it's too boring too me. Especially all that classic economy stuff...

However, I like the manifesto. But from what I read, there is nothing that could justify central planning after socializing workplaces. It's sure to me that the higher phase without some central system of distribution is just impossible, but why earlier?

So could anyone cite Marx that he actually was for central planning? And I ask strictly about Marx, and not Lenin, Mao, Stalin or other mass killers.

[LOLseph Stalin]

I think this part of the Manifesto makes it pretty clear that Marx was for central planning in the transitional stage:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

[reb]

I think this part of the Manifesto makes it pretty clear that Marx was for central planning in the transitional stage:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

Hilarious that you inserted the word transitonal in there.

[LOLseph Stalin]

Hilarious that you inserted the word transitonal in there.

How so? If you're one of those people who think full communism can be established just by abolishing the state then you're just an idealist.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That part of the Manifesto is outdated to say the least - most of its demands have been carried out by bourgeois governments in the time that has passed since the publication of the Manifesto to the present. On the topic of planning, however, here is how Engels puts it:

"With men we enter history. Animals also have a history, that of their derivation and gradual evolution to their present position. This history, however, is made for them, and in so far as they themselves take part in it, this occurs without their knowledge or desire. On the other hand, the more that human beings become removed from animals in the narrower sense of the word, the more they make their own history consciously, the less becomes the influence of unforeseen effects and uncontrolled forces of this history, and the more accurately does the historical result correspond to the aim laid down in advance.

If, however, we apply this measure to human history, to that of even the most developed peoples of the present day, we find that there still exists here a colossal disproportion between the proposed aims and the results arrived at, that unforeseen effects predominate, and that the uncontrolled forces are far more powerful than those set into motion according to plan. And this cannot be otherwise as long as the most essential historical activity of men, the one which has raised them from bestiality to humanity and which forms the material foundation of all their other activities, namely the production of their requirements of life, that is today social production, is above all subject to the interplay of unintended effects from uncontrolled forces and achieves its desired end only by way of exception and, much more frequently, the exact opposite.

In the most advanced industrial countries we have subdued the forces of nature and pressed them into the service of mankind; we have thereby infinitely multiplied production, so that a child now produces more than a hundred adults previously did. And what is the result? Increasing overwork and increasing misery of the masses, and every ten years a great [economic] collapse. Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind, and especially on his countrymen, when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom.


Only conscious organisation of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way, can lift mankind above the rest of the animal world as regards the social aspect, in the same way that production in general has done this for men in their aspect as species. Historical evolution makes such an organisation daily more indispensable, but also with every day more possible. From it will date a new epoch of history, in which mankind itself, and with mankind all branches of its activity, and especially natural science, will experience an advance that will put everything preceding it in the deepest shade."


(From the introduction to the Dialectics of Nature.)


And furthermore:

"However, we have seen repeatedly that in existing bourgeois society men are dominated by the economic conditions created by themselves, by the means of production which they themselves have produced, as if by an alien force. The actual basis of the religious reflective activity therefore continues to exist, and with it the religious reflection itself. And although bourgeois political economy has given a certain insight into the causal connection of this alien domination, this makes no essential difference. Bourgeois economics can neither prevent crises in general, nor protect the individual capitalists from losses, bad debts and bankruptcy, nor secure the individual workers against unemployment and destitution. It is still true that man proposes and God (that is, the alien domination of the capitalist mode of production) disposes. Mere knowledge, even if it went much further and deeper than that of bourgeois economic science, is not enough to bring social forces under the domination of society. What is above all necessary for this, is a social act. And when this act has been accomplished, when society, by taking possession of all means of production and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself and all its members from the bondage in which they are now held by these means of production which they themselves have produced but which confront them as an irresistible alien force, when therefore man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes -- only then will the last alien force which is still reflected in religion vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect."

(From Anti-Duhring.)


And furthermore:

"Even though the Katheder-Socialists persistently call upon us proletarian Socialists to tell them how we can prevent overpopulation and the consequent threat to the existence of the new social order, I see no reason at all why I should do them the favour. I consider it a sheer waste of time to dispel all the scruples and doubts of these people which arise from their muddled superwisdom, or even to refute, for instance, the awful twaddle which Schäffle alone has compiled in his numerous big volumes. It would require a fair-sized book merely to correct all the passages set in inverted commas which these gentlemen have misquoted from Capital. They should first learn to read and to copy before demanding that one should answer their questions...


There is of course the abstract possibility that the human population will become so numerous that its further increase will have to be checked. If it should become necessary for communist society to regulate the production of men, just as it will have already regulated the production of things, then it, and it alone, will be able to do this without difficulties. It seems to me that it should not be too difficult for such a society to achieve in a planned way what has already come about naturally, without planning, in France and Lower Austria. In any case it will be for those people to decide if, when and what they want to do about it, and what means to employ. I don’t feel qualified to offer them any advice or counsel in this matter. They will presumably be at least as clever as we are."


(Letter to Kautsky.)

I genuinely don't understand how people can profess to be socialists and oppose central planning - unless their "socialism" is some sort of federation of small commodity producers and their associations.

[reb]

How so? If you're one of those people who think full communism can be established just by abolishing the state then you're just an idealist.

The user asked for what Marx wrote, not some Stalinist interpretation. You didn't even quote the proper part. And you don't know what idealism means apparently.

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible."

[LOLseph Stalin]

The user asked for what Marx wrote, not some Stalinist interpretation. You didn't even quote the proper part. And you don't know what idealism means apparently.

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible."

Stalinist interpretation? Those were Marx's words. Besides, the quote you've just posted says pretty much the exact same thing. Centralized in the hands of the state. Key words there. The proletariat makes up the state after the revolution.

[reb]

Stalinist interpretation? Those were Marx's words. Besides, the quote you've just posted says pretty much the exact same thing. Centralized in the hands of the state. Key words there. The proletariat makes up the state after the revolution.

Show me where marx mentions "transitional stage" in relation to that. Are you some sort of Bordigist with their invariant program? There's nothing to be ashamed of when saying that something written in 1848 belongs to 1848. Marx even supported the bourgeoisie at the time after dissolving the communist league. Pretty certain that Marx wasn't right there.

[robbo203]

I must admit. I haven't read "The Capital". I'm sorry but it's too boring too me. Especially all that classic economy stuff...

However, I like the manifesto. But from what I read, there is nothing that could justify central planning after socializing workplaces. It's sure to me that the higher phase without some central system of distribution is just impossible, but why earlier?

So could anyone cite Marx that he actually was for central planning? And I ask strictly about Marx, and not Lenin, Mao, Stalin or other mass killers.

It depends, of course, on what you mean by "central planning". The classic definition of central planning means society-wide planning in the form of a single giant plan undertaken by a single planning authority in which the total pattern of production is planned in advance. A characteristic of such a model is its absolute rigidity and the absence of any kind of feedback mechanism which might alter the quantitatiive relationship between the millions of inputs and output that constitute the plan and so undermine the integrity of the plan itself. Of course such a model is totally impracticable and unrealisable and should be seen more as an "ideal type" in the Weberian sense


Whether Marx actually advocated central planning in this sense is doubtful but there are certainly some passages in his and Engels' writing that appear to do that. I wrote something a few years ago which makes a passing reference to Marxs ideas on planning in general. There is an one excerpt from the article which you might find helpful in this regard which I reproduce below

Is the assumption that a communist or socialist economy would entail centralised or society-wide planning a reasonable one to make? It might if it could be shown that is what was being advocated by supporters of such an economy. Steele is unequivocal in thinking this is the case. He cites Marx’s and Engels’ objections to the anarchy of capitalist production and the allocation of resources “behinds the backs of the producers” as well their advocacy of “conscious social control” and the implementation of a “definite social plan”22. It may seem a reasonable inference from such language that what Marx and Engels had in mind was indeed the kind of society-wide – or central – planning. to which Steele refers.



However, as Steele himself acknowledges, the word “plan” has many shades of meaning23; it could embody just a set of intentions or it could embrace also the means to execute these intentions. Some of the points that Steele makes flatly contradict his claim that Marx and Engels stood unequivocally for central planning. Thus, he acknowledges that “Marx sees the communist administration as a federation of self-governing groups largely concerned with their internal affairs and collaborating for the comparatively few purposes that concern all the groups”24. This vision of communism is unquestionably incompatible with Steele’s version of “central planning”.



The reference to “anarchy of production” is highly misleading and it does seem very much that Steele has got the wrong end of the stick in assuming that Marx and Engels implied by this the desire to replace a situation in which you had a myriad of plans (and the unplanned interconnections between them) with a single society-wide plan where the total pattern of production is planned. On the contrary, it seems more reasonable to assume that by “anarchy of production”, Marx and Engels were referring to the blind ungovernable economic laws of capitalism which intercede in human affairs and get in the way of conscious human intentions. Often this phrase is linked in their writings to the capitalist trade cycle which is a particularly apt manifestation of those ungovernable laws. Here you have a perverse situation of “overproduction” alongside increased misery and want. What could better convey the idea of subjective intentions being wilfully denied and flouted by forces operating beyond the control of those very intentions?



Further evidence in support of this interpretation of “anarchy of production” is provided by Engels’ claim in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific that anarchy in capitalism grows to a “greater and greater height”. This is an allusion to the increasing severity of economic crises he imagined would occur in capitalism. Whether or not he was correct in supposing this is besides the point. Steele maintains that Marx and Engels subscribed to the idea that there was an inherent tendency in capitalism towards centralisation and concentration – in other words a gradual diminution in the area of unplanned spontaneity existing between competing units by virtue of the decline in the number of such units competing in the market. Strictly speaking, this would imply less “anarchy” on Steele’s interpretation of the word but as we see in Engels’ case, such anarchy is likely to grow to a “greater and greater height”. Clearly this directly contradicts Steele’s claim that “For Marx, anarchy of production is not an emergent quality of the market. The market does not cause anarchy of production. Anarchy of production causes the market.”25


http://www.cvoice.org/CV3cox.pdf