Evening star., 1938-12-29
By EDMUND ]. LOWRY.

BY EDMUND ]. LOWRY,
CAS- told to Selie Greenberg of the
Providence Journal-Bulletin)
PROVIDENCE, R. l., Dec. % N.A
N.A).-"Planned economy" are two
magic words bestowed upon a
credulous world by Soviet Russia.
The Soviet five-year plans have be-
come SO famous that even Hitler
has borrowed the idea to launch a
Nazi four-year plan, and some of our
own New Dealers are casting envious
glances upon a country where the
government, taking no nonsense
from any one, is annually drawing
up a vast blueprint for every con-
ceivable line of production and con-
sumption and telling each citizen
exactly what to do and when to
do it.
The Soviet theorists maintain that
central planning is the only system
under which the highest form of
national efficiency can be attained,
and listening to them, you'd think
that capitalists had never heard of
either planning or efficiency.
Under capitalism, these theorists
say, things are done haphazardly,
the left hand never knows what the
right is doing; each branch of in
dustry is going along merrily on its
way without paying any attention
to what the other branches are
doing; every one is merely out to
grab all the profits he can, and
that's why there are depressions,
unemployment and poverty. But
under Socialism. they boast, every
thing is planned down to the min
utest detail at one central point by
specialists who have only the in
terest of the people at heart, every
branch of production is perfectly
co-ordinated and there is no eX-
ploitation of any one.
Biggest Mess Ever"
Well, having worked as an engi-
neer under both systems, can say
without qualification that plan
ned economy" as it operates in
Soviet Russia is the highest form
of ineflciency and the greatest mess
have ever seen.
The trouble is not with the idea
of planning things out in advance.
That's a very laudable idea. AS a
matter of fact, we've always had
planning in American industry. No
concern could exist very long with
out planning out in advance its op-
Grating costs, the best methods of
efficient production and the most
reasonable means of obtaining its
raw materials and of marketing its
finished products.
There Is no central industrial
board Of planners in Washington,
but somehow, by the automatic laws
Of capitalist economy based on the
profit motive, each concern, large or
small, fits into the picture. If it
doesn't fit into the picture, if it
doesn't fill some need and can't find
customers for its products, it goes
under. The natural laws of compe-
t1tion and of the survival of the
f1ttest thus operate as a sort of
invisible form of balanced planning.
The tumble Is Fantastic.
But in Russia these natural proc
esses of competition and individual
Initiative have been eliminated. In
stead there sits in Moscow a central
board of planners whose duty is to
figure out every year exactly how
much wheat, corn, rye, cotton and
tobacco is to be grown, how much
coal is to be dug and oil pumped and
refined, how many tons of steel,
automobiles, sewing machines. radia-
tors and thousand and one other
things are to be manufactured, how
many suits of clothes, hats, shoes.
musical instruments and pencils are
to be turned out, what the replace
ment needs Of industry will be, how
many new plants and houses will
have to be built, and how much Of
everything else the country needs
will have to be made.
1t all works out very beautifully
on paper, but human nature and
machines being what they are. espe-
cially Russian human nature and
machines, the resulting jumble is
fantastic. It's enough to make you
dizzy just to think of it, when YOU
consider that all this planning has
to be done for a country covering
one-sixth of the globe and having a
population of 17O,OOO,O00.
The Soviet central plan is like a
delicate mechanism. If something
happens to throw one or more of
the numerous component parts out
OF gear, the whole piece of ma
chinery breaks down. And some
thing Invariably happens.
Still, If the technical specialists
were left to themselves, some ser-
blance of order might conceivably
be restored out of this chaos.
The apex of the pyramid, of
course, is Stain as secretary-general
OF the Communist party and the die
tator of Russia. Under him are the
polltbureau, a sort of kitchen cab
met" made up of few of his closest
advisers, and the full cabinet. Then
comes the State Planning Commits
sion with its huge staff of thousands
Of planners.
Each commissariat or ministry is
made up Of number of trusts di-
recting a particular branch of in
dustry, like the coal trust, the steel
trust, the automotive trust, and so
on, and these trusts issue orders to
the manufacturing plants in their
respective fields.
tcopyrisht, 1888, by the North American
Newspaper Alliance, 1nc)