ABSTRACT
Public enterprise without a plan can achieve something; a plan without public enterprise is likely to remain on paper. A rather broader-based opposition, in which that of the landlords, moneylenders, speculators, etc., is included, may be provoked by the government’s efforts to accumulate the resources necessary for the creation of public enterprises. Not only the pace but the character of economic development influences the extent to which public enterprise has to be used. In a mixed economy, therefore, the problem is perennial. When the government puts up taxation to raise money for public enterprise, it is inevitably accused of ‘strangling private initiative’; when, in response to these accusations, it reduces both taxation and its own investment, a deflationary spiral is liable to begin, in so far as private investment, instead of responding to the new incentives, follows the ‘lead’ given by the public authorities.
