Planning in the economy of the XXI century: what kind of and what is it for?
The authors describe the potential of selective planning in modern market economy and give respond to Prof. Oktay Mamedov's critique addressed to their publications (see: Oktay Mamedov. 2016. "Trojan horse" of Directive Planning. Terra Economicus, 2016, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 6-25. DOI: 10.18522/2073-6606-2016-14-2-6-25). In particular, the article shows that planning in modern market economy is qualitatively different from Soviet one, but can use some of its solutions. Planning in the economy of late capitalism can formulate priorities of development and use indirect methods of selective regulation in private sector and direct methods in social sector for realization of priorities and modernization of economy, in particular, Russian. Such planning is, (1) something fundamentally smaller than the Soviet plan, which was addressed to the public enterprises and had mostly mandatory (directive) character. But at the same time it is (2) something essentially more than the plan- forecast and indicative plan because it includes a well-defined system of "regulatory rules" (means of implementing the plan), which is approved by the society and is mandatory for implementation in the area of the national economy, that is subject to regulation. In addition, it (3) critically synthesizes the disparate practices of the past and uses the achievements of network information society, and in this sense, goes beyond all previous experiences of planning. Authors also show that not only plan economy, but the market one has 'failures' as well, including such satellites of the market as deception, fraud, theft. The methods to overcome such 'failures' of the state as bureaucracy and corruption are also shown. According to the arguments given by the authors the logic of selective economic planning is as follows. Plans can and should fix the democratically elaborated and accepted goals of socio-economic development and propose a set of measures for their implementation. Its tree goals are based on the dialogue of civil society, expert communities, academic and government institutions. Among the goals of social development are a priority for the progress of human qualities, and economic growth, the more purely quantitative, should be considered only as a means to achieve this goal. Means of implementation of the priorities accepted by the society in the modern economy of late capitalism may include indirect regulators addressed most part of the economy (mass production, trade and commercial services, finance, etc.) and a combination of direct and indirect methods to regulate the very limited public sector (mainly education, health, fundamental science, culture, infrastructure). Direct and indirect methods of regulation are expedient to unite under a single program-plan. The implementation of the selective economic planning assumes that the economy will remain market-capitalist in its basis, because indirect regulators do not cancel the market conjuncture mechanisms, but only correct it.