I think the critique is deeper that that. The duties and activities of central planners and capitalists are very similar. They set priorities, decide on produc

I think the critique is deeper that that. The duties and activities of central planners and capitalists are very similar. They set priorities, decide on production processes, allocate labour, set budgets, quotas. They decide compensation and "punishments" for those deemed to have failed. Downthread, Eru links to the famous "The Theory of the Firm" where Coase analogizes capitalist firms as islands of central planning in a sea of competition. Coase is very explicit about tradeoffs to scale between planned internal production, and market production, and this is similar to the tradeoffs in scale described by Haldane here. Coase published that in 1937 but Haldane clearly sees the parallel in 1926. Haldane's _point_ is that it would take a talented brute like Ford to try to run even a tiny entity like Andorra in a centrally-planned way. It's not like the revolutionary Leninists had any hesitation to arrest workers showing "counter-revolutionary" tendencies like striking to demanding better pay. I don't think it coincidental that this article coincides with the rise of Stalin. Haldane was a wooly-headed romantic Socialist at heart, but he recognized that Leninist dictatorship couldn't work at a national scale, even in theory. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37552027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37552027 https://libcom.org/article/strikes-against-stalin-1930s-russia-jeffrey-rossman https://libcom.org/article/strikes-against-stalin-1930s-russ...