ABSTRACT
It is a regrettable but undeniable fact that economics, more than other scientific disciplines, is liable to recurrent fashions and fads, the periodic re-intrusion into professional discussion of popular superstitions which earlier generations of economists had successfully driven back into the circles of cranks and demagogues. Inflationism is one of these irrepressible themes which again and again attract some half-trained economists, and the advocacy of collectivist economic planning has become another since it first became popular under this name through its use by the Russian communists. The conception, originally developed by some of the organisers of the German war economy during World War I, was thoroughly discussed by economists in the 1920s and 1930s.
