ABSTRACT
In the history of capitalist Britain the problems and contradictions associated with forms of private landownership have been of recurrent importance — in the material conditions of life, in the political sphere and in the theoretical focus of economists' work. A more adequate view of the land problem shows how private land-ownership and the land market can determine what gets built and the character of the production processes involved as well as the distribution of the proceeds. From time to time demands have been made for the strengthening or weakening of the land-use planning system. While the war-time machinery of state economic planning was largely dismantled by the early 1950s, a number of important planning mechanisms have operated during the period, of which the land-use planning system created by the 1947 Town and County Planning Act is the most familiar. Sometimes even the internal planning of central and local state expenditure and policy has been co-ordinated.
