ABSTRACT
Having reviewed the performance of the state as an entrepreneur, we turn to examine its achievements in the administration of direct controls. The urge to control was powerful in Nkrumah’s Ghana and reemerged in full strength after the 1972 coup. It was shown in chapter 2 that a large body of economists looked with scepticism at the efficacy of the market mechanism as an agent for economic progress in low-income countries; chapter 3 showed that Nkrumah fully shared this scepticism, and expressed unbounded faith in the superiority of economic planning and control. It was also shown that, although Nkrumah and his colleagues affected to see colonialism as embodying the quintessence of laissez-faire, colonial administrations had themselves been markedly interventionist in a number of areas, having enacted legislation to control prices (during the Second World War), rents, and interest rates (see p. 53).
