Planning and Anarchy

Abstract

Debates about planning on both the left and the right tend to misconstrue as problems of calculation what are, in fact, problems of control. The new powers of computing and communication developed in the twenty-first century do not, therefore, render the central planning of the twentieth century newly feasible. Rather, they merely make it possible to see as properly political problems that were once thought to be entirely technical. Restoring missing historical context to the socialist calculation debate, “Planning and Anarchy” discloses the blind spots in contemporary discussions of planning and offers an alternate vision of emancipation and planning, no longer dependent upon the tools of coercion inherited from capitalism.