Page:Neurath O. (1942) International Planning for Freedom.pdf/14

Rh upon international planning and not only upon national planning, particularly as far as countries depend upon import. Regional planning supports not only technical efficiency but also revives self-government, where such a self-government was traditional. One would be mistaken in thinking that far-reaching regional planning is a condition for national planning or for far-reaching international planning. The war teaches us the lesson of how much can be achieved by relatively comprehensive national planning and relatively weak regional planning. All these planning patterns are of great importance but we should regard them as relatively independent of one another, though supporting one another. Particular research is needed for analyzing their relationship.

Within a  'societas societatum'  based on planning, therefore, very different patterns of organization may exist side by side. A voiding the traditional classifications, which are not systematically made, we may begin with all combinations of three characteristics (profit directs production, profit a source of income, more-than-one party) and their opposites.

We could take into account still more qualities and have to bear in mind that all these qualities can occur in different degrees and varieties. In this way we get eight types:

(1) Profit directs production; profit is a source of income for shareholders and, of course, for owners of factories, etc.; more-than-one-party system - Great Britain, U.S.A. and many other states about 1900 represent this type.

(2) Profit has the same position as in (1) but there is an absolute regime, e.g. Tsarism about 1900.

Both types are not suitable for being fitted into patterns of international planning. The following six types are suitable for such a pattern, as far as they are not aggressive in their national tendencies. We have to bear in mind that not only international trade and problems of 'investment' lead to tensions.

(3) The position of profit as the ruling element is shaken; but shareholders get their income from profits; stock exchange continues; there is a more-than-one-party system. This is the position now in war time in the U.S.A. and Great Britain, where war planning rules production and distribution. Labour here plays a certain role; trade unions take care of their members.