Is Accurate Social Planning Possible

HE VERY title of my paper may evoke a smile: "Don't you know that the Soviet, the Fascist, the Hitlerite, the Rooseveltian and many other governments have been doing social planning and enforcing it? Don't you know that many leaders of business and of various associations have been planning the functions and activities of their respective institutions? Then why beat about the bush with your futile academic 'Is Social Planning Possible?' Since it is practiced, evidently it is possible." To such a smile I can humbly answer: "Yes, I do know that it is practiced; I know also that in some form or other social planning has been carried on by society since time immemorial; I know that it was practiced by primitive man; undertaken by the governments of many past empires,-Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome (beginning especially with Diocletian), Ancient Peru and Mexico, certainly Ancient China, and many others; and their planning was on a vast scale; it was even centralized and 'rationalized' in accordance with the science and wisdom of their time. I am aware also that some of these plans are remarkably like, indeed one may say almost identical with, the government-planning of the present time. All this and more I happen to know. If, however, I inquire, 'Is Social Planning Possible?' I mean, in such an inquiry, to be concerned, not with the possibility of social planning of any sort whatsoever, whether wise or foolish, but with the possibility of such planning as that in which the results achieved coincide with thoseforeseen, and exactly in the way that was intended." When the question is put in this form, it can hardly evoke a smile. It is a real and hitherto unsolved problem. As an unsolved problem it still needs serious analysis. Such an analysis obviously cannot be made within the space of this short paper. All that I can do for the moment is to lay down some considerations which seem to be rele-