Friedrich August von Hayek: Review of Planned Society. Yesterday, To-day, To-morrow (1938)

Hayek’s short review of Findlay Mackenzie’s symposium combines an assessment of its editorial achievement with a pointed criticism of its treatment of planning. He finds the contributions generally interesting and often informative, but identifies a gap between advocating planning and explaining how it could preserve freedom and democracy. His concluding objection concerns the claim that defence preparations justify extending economic planning.

The review first establishes the symposium’s breadth: roughly half its articles are reprints, and its contributors hold sharply opposed positions. Hayek therefore judges its coherence principally by the interest of its individual essays, rather than attributing a common doctrine to them. He then distinguishes the volume’s subject from a technical investigation of how planning would work:

The work deals less with the technique than with the tasks and consequences of economic planning.

After two historical sections, the book separates planning in particular fields from planning economic activity as a whole. Hayek praises the informative character of the former, which ranges from monetary policy to town planning and industrial regulation, while finding the economics of comprehensive planning the least satisfactory part. This contrast matters: useful accounts of intervention in particular areas do not themselves supply an adequate explanation of economy-wide coordination.

The discussion of cultural consequences brings the review’s central concern into focus:

Considerable space is devoted to a survey of the cultural effects of planning, and it is interesting to observe how much all the authors are concerned about the compatibility of planning with freedom and democracy.

Hayek reads both scepticism and repeated assurances of compatibility as evidence that this has become the central problem. His objection to the assurances is precise: they do not show how compatibility would be achieved. He also questions Mitrany’s expectation that people would eventually reject planners if material stability required intellectual and spiritual oppression. The prospect of a later reaction offers no secure answer to the danger itself.

The final paragraph commends Mackenzie’s introductions, bibliography, and contributor biographies, then turns the editor’s own concession into a criticism of planning. Mackenzie anticipates that war would disrupt a planned society more severely than one in which free enterprise could adjust continuously to wartime needs. Hayek draws a narrowly targeted implication:

This admission might well serve as a warning to those who seek to make the necessity of preparation for defence a new argument for further extending the planned sector of economic life.

The review’s significance lies in these tests of the case for planning: whether its advocates explain the preservation of liberty, and whether centralized arrangements can adapt to disruption. Hayek acknowledges the symposium’s scholarly usefulness while showing how concerns and concessions within it unsettle confidence in comprehensive planning.