Table Of ContentTHE NEW ORDEAL BY PLANNING
The Experience of the Forties and the Sixties
By the same author
AN INDUSTRIAL SURVEY OF CUMBERLAND AND FURNESS
(with A. Winterbottom)
JUVENILE UNEMPLOYMENT (with A. Winterbottom)
WAGES AND LABOUR IN THE COTTON SPINNING INDUSTRY
(with E. M. Gray)
THE JUVENILE LABOUR MARKET (with Sylvia Jewkes)
THE SOURCES OF INVENTION
(with David Sawers and Richard Stillerman)
THE GENESIS OF THE BRITISH NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE
(with Sylvia Jewkes)
VALUE FOR MONEY IN MEDICINE (with Sylvia Jewkes)
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ENTERPRISE
THE NEW ORDEAL
BY PLANNING
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE FORTIES
A.ND THE SIXTIES
JOHN JEWKES
FBLLOVV OF MERTON COLLEGE
PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC ORGANISATION, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Palgrave Macmillan
1968
ISBN 978-1-349-81752-8 ISBN 978-1-349-81750-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-81750-4
© John Jewkes 1968
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1968 978-0-333-03836-9
Introduction to Second Edition and Part One
Published by
MACMILLAN & CO LTD
Little Essex Street London WC2
and also at Bombay Calcutta and Madras
Macmillan South Africa (Publishers) Pty Ltd Johannesburg
The Macmillan Company of Australia Pty Ltd Melbourne
The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd Toronto
St Martin's Press Inc New York
Library of Congress catalog card no. 68-11548
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION, page ix
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION, page xi
PART ONE
ORDEAL BY PLANNING IN THE SIXTIES
THE CONSERVATIVE PLAN, page 3
THE LABOUR PLAN, page 12
MUST CENTRAL ECONOMIC PLANNING INEVITABLY FAIL? page 14.
THE COSTS OF PLANNING, page 20
WHY DO CONSERVATIVES AND BUSINESS MEN
FAVOUR PLANNING? page 23
PLANNING AND THEORIES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH, page 30
THE FUTURE? page 35
CONCLUSIONS, page 39
POSTSCRIPT, page 42
PART TWO
ORDEAL BY PLANNING IN THE FORTIES
I. THE SPREAD OF THE FASHION, page 45
II. Is THE BUSINESS MAN OBSOLETE ? page 62
III. CONFUSION AMONG THE PLANNERS, page 80
IV. PLANNERS AS A SPECIES, page 97
V. PLANNING AS A SCIENTIFIC METHOD, page 121
VI. PLANNING AND PROSPERITY, page 142
VII. PLANNING ·AND ECONOMIC STABILITY, page 164
VIII. PLANNING AND FREEDOM, page 182
IX. THE MORAL SICKNESS OF A PLANNED SOCIETY, page 203
X. NATIONAL PLANNING AND THE WORLD ECONOMY, page 223
INDEX, page 237
V
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I; or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
Henry IV, Part I, Act III, Scene 1
Not merely because we are ignorant of the data required for the
solution, even of very simple problems in organic and social life,
are we called upon to acquiesce in an arrangement which, to be
sure, we have no power to disturb; nor yet because these data, did
we possess them, are too complex to be dealt with by any rational
calculus we possess or are ever likely to acquire; but because,
in addition to these difficuities, reasoning is a force most apt to
divide and disintegrate; and though division and disintegration
may often be the necessary preliminaries of social development,
still more necessary are the forces that bind and stiffen, without
which there could be no society to develop.
A. J. BALFOUR, The Foundations of Belief,
1895
I very rarely make statements about the future, as the Hon.
Gentleman, if he studies my past statements, will realise.
DOUGLAS JAY, House of Commons,
November 30, 1966
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION
WITHIN less than one generation British Governments have twice
fallen victim to the hallucination that they possess the knowledge
and power positively to determine the rate of economic growth
through central economic planning, and twice, in the grip of these
ideas, they have embarked upon massive figuring and the prepara
tion of elaborate economic blue-prints which have quickly led to
confusion and frustration. Twice is a lot. And since these Govern
ment excursions into a world of unreality have not merely wasted
time and energy and fostered much double-talk in economics, but
have also led to breakdowns in the economy and made us poorer, it
ought to be possible to draw some moral from these two melancholy
episodes. That is the purpose of this volume.
The first of these periods of central economic planning covers
the years 1945-51 whilst the Labour Party was in power. I wrote
about those years in Ordeal by Planning, first published in 1948,
and I wish to add nothing to what I then said. This original essay is
reprinted, virtually unchanged, in later pages. Despite its imper
I
fections, it vividly recalls the controversies of that time and I have
nothing to retract from the doctrine I then enunciated - that when
Governments begin to claim that they know of short cuts to pros
perity, economic trouble is in the offing. But the overriding reason
for reprinting what I said nearly twenty years ago is simply to draw
attention to the fact that there was an earlier period of centrai econ
omic planning. One of the most surprising things about the second
period of planning after 1960 has been that practically no one has
referred to the earlier period; no one has sought to embody into the
policies of the present the lessons of the past. This is not good sense.
Any prologue to the original Ordeal by Planning need be only
short. By 1951, public interest in central economic planning had
Chapters III and IV of the first edition, however, have been excluded from
I
the second edition because, whilst they deal with important topics, they now seem
to be less closely bound up with the main subject than they then were.
IX
x THE NEW ORDEAL BY PLANNING
evaporated. Noone cared to defend the absurdities which so recently
had been claimed as a higher form of economic wisdom. Certain
planning pundits, indeed, some of whom since 1960 have come back
to the stage in important roles, did not altogether lose heart. But
they devoted themselves to the proliferation of mechanical models
of economic development of doubtful value, or to the tendering of
advice to the poorer under-developed countries, and especiany
India, where their doctrines have done much harm. Despite this, it
was possible to hope that the rough lesson of experience had been
learnt: that however deep-seated and serious were the economic
problems of Britain (and no one could doubt their presence) the
publishing of central economic plans was as little likely to bring
about economic advance as the turning of the hands of a watch to
change the pace of the sun.
This is a convenient place, before embarking upon a study of the
period of planning after 1960, to make once again a point I stressed
in 1948. In examining British planning I have been compelled to
name and often to criticise the views of public men of high standing.
I would have been happy to have been able to avoid this, because I
am not concerned with personalities but with ideas. But the truth
is that no real analysis of planning can be made without scrutinising
carefully the ideas of those who were or are our economic rulers for
the time being. Any study of a market system and of its conse
quences can be made impersonally, for then we are dealing with a
spontaneous organisation for which no one is directly and consciously
responsible. The market system can be defined; all those who study
it are studying the same thing although they may finally disagree
about its efficacy. But planning is not clearly defined; each planner
has his own interpretation of what it is and how it should be oper
ated. Perhaps the only really satisfactory definition of planning is
that planning is what planners think and do. So there is no way of
ascertaining what kind of an economic world is being cooked up for
the rest of us except by a careful study of the utterances and actions
of those statesmen who have taken upon themselves the task of
consciously manipulating the economic system.
University of Oxford May I967
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION
I HAVE written this book reluctantly. I know that it will
offend some of my friends and I fear it may hurt some of
those with whom I worked in friendly co-operation during
the war. But I had no option. For I believe that the recent
melancholy decline of Great Britain is largely of our own
making. The fall in our standard of living to a level which
excites the pity and evokes the charity of many other richer
countries, the progressive restrictions on individual liberties,
the ever-widening destruction of respect for law, the steady
sapping of our instinct for tolerance and compromise, the
sharpening of class distinctions, our growing incapacity to
playa rightful part in world affairs - these sad changes are
not due to something that happened in the remote past.
They are due to something which has happened in the past
two years; At the root of our troubles lies the fallacy that
the best way of ordering economic affairs is to place the
responsibility for all crucial decisions in the hands of the
State. It is a simple error, it is certainly an understandable
error. But it is one which, driven to its logical conclusion,
as it is now being driven by those who have been constitu
tionally put into power, can bring upon us untold miseries
and humiliations of which the past two years have given us
a foretaste. Holding these views, and knowing that basically
the men and women of this country are of such a quality
that they merit, and can indeed in the right environment
command, a better fate than now seems to be in store for
them, it would have been disloyal of me not to attempt
to say my part.
There will be those who will dismiss this book as essen
tially negative and destructive. And so it is, if clearing a
field of weeds before planting the new crop is negative and
xi
