When the USSR collapsed, the issue of economic planning seemed to be settled once and for all. In the struggle between the market and the plan, the former had won a decisive victory. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the verdict is not so obvious anymore. Throughout the world, academic and political debates about economic planning are on the rise.
Three reasons explain this unexpected return. First, the Great recession of 2008. This crisis of capitalism not only illustrated, once again, the irrationality of the market. But the efforts to contain it came with massive state interventions, financial and regulatory. In the post-2008 world, the victory of the “free and undistorted” market mechanism appears less decisive after all.
Secondly, the ecological crisis. When it comes to thinking about sustainable development, many consider planning without using the word. Nowadays experts rather refer to environmental “scenarios”, that will deliver a carbon-free future. In the “Green new deal” debate sparked by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of the project, the word “planning” is rarely used. But the idea of subjecting productive choices and investment to long-term goals other than profit is clearly there. It amounts to economic planning.
