ABSTRACT
Introductory remarks Larry Wolf's paper (1976) raises a variety of questions about the role of the state in relation to capitalist economic development. Some of the questions are practical and concern exactly how and in what ways we can anticipate the intervention of the state in the American economy over the next few years. As in the 1930s, another time of economic troubles, the possibility of centralized national economic planning is being actively considered (together with a more brutal return to 'pure market forces') as a means to rationalize an economic order that has obviously become unbalanced and, perhaps, perilously close - how close we will probably never know - to being totally unhinged. Quite properly, Wolf sees the move towards national economic planning as creating new opportunities as well as new problems for the radical Left. Quite properly too, he argues that the manner in which the move is made will have an effect upon the outcomes. But the issue is perhaps more complex than that. Given the present power structure, I am not as sanguine about even the potential outcomes as he is. I feel I am watching a rerun of a tired movie of the 1930s, with shades of the I 890s, as goals such as 'social justice' and 'conservation' are gradually converted into goals of efficiency and market rationality tinged with not a little socialism for the rich, financial support for shaky corporations and financial institutions, and the like. In each of these two preceding eras, a whiff of national economic policy-making was quickly combined with the drive to rationalize the market system to create the very problems it was designed to get rid of on a higher plane and in more concentrated form in the long run.
