Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Alternative to the Market System? 267production in the hands of governmental authorities orplanners. The market system does not centrally plan production;the alternative system does. In the market system,production responds not to central decisions but to consumerpurchases made at efficiency prices—or at approximationsto them.The distinction is valid as far as it goes. The trouble withit is that, models of pure market system aside, all real-worldmarket-system societies practice a great deal of centralplanning of production, whether it is called that or not. Despitethe ascendance of the market system as the twentyfirstcentury opens, national planning of production is notdead either as idea or practice, anathema as the word is insome circles. I mean by national planning those proceduresthrough which a society or its rulers make efforts toward informedand thoughtful governmental choices about boththe near and distant future. Whether or not one likes it, allsocieties make such efforts. Planning, so defined, has neverbeen absent. The tyrants of antiquity sometimes practicedit; so did the Mercantilists, against whom Adam Smithmade his case for the market system. So did the allieddemocracies to mobilize for the First and Second WorldWars. Indeed, it is so commonplace that it might be said toneed no label. We might just as well get over our nervousnessabout the word. It is within human cognitive capacityto make planning thus defined a tolerable success—but alsoof course within other human capacities, like avarice, tomake it a failure.Not fully realizing what they are doing, contemporarygovernments in market societies find themselves practicingplanning as just defined—in industrial policy, for example.They also make some deliberate choices—sometimeswise, sometimes not—to engage in it, as in environmental