Trade Unionism and Central Planning in Western Europe

Abstract

Twenty years ago there was little talk of central planning. Socialism entails, it was then held; (1) the extrusion of private profit-making, in the sense of one man or group hiring other men and selling their output for profit to a third party; and (2) the public or collective ownership of the means of production (other than human beings). Neither of these requirements singly make necessary any form of central planning. The Collective or public ownership of instruments of production is equally feasible without any associated central planning.' It was not only because they believed in the feasibility of socialism without any associated central planning that trade unionists eschewed the idea of central planning. Sidney Webb's proposals for the establishment of a Supreme Economic Planning Board to draw up production plans evoked little interest outside his Fabian circle, simply because his central-planning scheme was ideologically unacceptable to unions. Though he provided for democratic safeguards and reserved for unions a key role a permanent part of social organization, destined in the State of To-morrow for important functions,2 he could not overcome their guild-socialist scruples against centralized control. French unions, ideologically committed to anarcho-syndicalism which stood for de-centralization and the small producers' community, were unalterably opposed to an economie dirigge, dirigisme being identified with centralism and state intervention in general. The demand for socialization of credit, mining, transport, and power, after the First World War, was prompted by ideological objections of unions to the centralizing dirigiste forces in business and politics of the Third Republic. Even in Germany, where socialist-controlled trade unions acquiesced in the acceptance of centralization and concentration as an inevitable development to some higher form of economic organization, comprehensive planning schemes, such as the abortive Rathenau plan, were ignored by the movement.