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Plan had excited the admiration of the world. Why could not Americahave a plan—five years or some other span at least? In fact,what could be said against a community of intelligent beings, whichhad the means of producing abundance, yet suffered from want,sitting down with forethought and fabricating a plan to possess itselfof the abundance within its reach? Thorstein Veblen had infectedmany younger thinkers with his lucubrations on the capitalistpreoccupation with the creation of scarcity through employer sabotageor the withdrawal of efficiency in production to keep down production.Why, therefore, does not America set about working outa five-year plan of its own to set all its producing instruments towork to produce not scarcity in the interests of profits but abundancein the interest of the people? Everyone saw that economic lawswere working blindly against us, and there was a powerful appealin the demand that we control and direct economic law to work forus, as we control the law of gravity, for constructive purposes. Theidea of planning is filled with artful suggestion. No one can thinkof an argument against planning.I have already outlined briefly the character of the problem involvedin business planning and in communist planning. I shall takethe risk of repetition to point up again this theory which it is soimportant for us to understand. For instance, the United St3tesSteel Corporation is an immense holding company, which operatesmines, steel plants, railroads, steamships, fabricating industries. Itis unthinkable that its directors would not sit down at intervals anddetermine on their future course—what plants should be operated,what plants should be slowed down or closed or replaced, whatproducts should be pushed most vigorously, what new merchandiseshould be offered, what prices should be, what markets should beexploited, how funds should be obtained, if at all, by shares or bondsor bank credit. In short, the intelligent directorate of this corporationmust operate on a plan. The same is true of Russia. The Sovietis an immense political organization. But it is something more. It isa gigantic holding company which owns every railroad, utility,manufacturing plant, every farm and store in the land. It is anoperating enterpriser—the only one—in Russia. Therefore, of necessityit must and can sit down at intervals and lay out a plan for192