The most popular project the British workers movement is that Economic Strategy (ALS) Alternative which has many variants, but essence constructed around the idea of planning agreements with the big corporations.
George Blazyca belongs a developing schoo which wants to cemocrase me ass. l put the emphasis on local council planning workers, planning itiatives. His book begins with a critique of centralisEuropean model, which it planning on the East It claims the alternative is locals anne malalves workers plans and local council planning to create jobs, which can start here and now, Thatcherism and the crisis not withstanding.
Such confused and misleading - and potentially will lead workers into a blind alley.
National planning
the contemporary industrialised countries has either been the bureaucratic the Stalinist states, or the "indicative planning of the social democrats. But the failure of both types is not because it is national planning.
East The Planning Disaster as IT SHOULD be a fundamental socialist thesis that the anarchy of capitalist crisis can only be overcome by socialist planning. The question is: what kind of planning, in what context, and with what powers? Blazyca calls it is the failure of bureaucratic planning - national plan 'ning without workers inmauve did WUIKCI Culi Inevitably such leads to major breakdowns and crisis However we shouldn't ignore the immensely pro gressive aspects of such national planning, for example in carrying through the • industrialisation the Soviet Social democratic 'indicative' plannine • has failed because it has refused to Many serious challenge to the power and prerogatives of capital.
Problem The problem with the alternative economic that it sul alcoy 'radical variant of dicative' left Keynesianism. It is not that it 1s 'undemocratic' although doubtless it is -but that it refuses to envisage an all-out assault on the power of capital.
Planning whether local or national only be call successtul it the immense resources that capitalist Britain has at its disposal are put in the hands of the working class no socialist short cut which goes round the nationalisation of the banks, the finance houses the leading monopolies.
Workers control ano local initiative will surel! be needed to prevent thi beginning becomin bureaucratic planning But 'local' planning car not substitute for it Attempts at local plar ning by Labour council: will in the coming years b increasingly constrained by huge social expenditur cuts. Labour councils are have to tread fine dividing line betweer defence of working clas gains administerins -the capitalist crisis. Onc you start to resort to rate: increases to finance loca plans, are stepping over that line.
The only answer then i: disengagement from loca power. Workers plans. like the Lucas plan, have a ing for workers ad ministration of ar 1 UVCId socialist plan for the They have crucial educational mobilising role. But the cannot substitute for, no: be put into effect without an overall socialist plan fe: the economv Without understar. ding that, many illusions ultimately reformist 1llu sions, will be created.
•Planning is good for yo case for Popula Control'.
George Blazyca. Pluto Pras for Socialssentes Pluto Press £2.50