ABSTRACT
Within the advanced capitalist society of the United States, planning has been searched for in a variety of realms. Some have chosen to look in the corporate sector, others have quested after its rudimentary beginnings in the national economic consequences of governmental actions, and those with an administrative bent have scoured the bureaucracies and the environment of large organizations for signs.1 Still others have been content to treat planning solely as a local phenomenon of little significance for the larger political economy.2 Despite the paucity of planners in positions of power 3 and the lack of an institutionalized planning apparatus at the national level,4 the possibility of planning continues to allure academics, activists and policymakers.5 But as long as no coherent theory of the function of planning in an advanced capitalist society is developed, this multitude of expeditions will continue to forage independently of each other and to bring back only stories of planning once glimpsed. In order to construct an institutionalized planning to be used for moral ends, such a theory should contain an evaluation of the role of planning within the larger political economy and a critical analysis of the interests planning serves.
