1852 



(i) Allocation of responsibility among the participants who will 



cooperate in executing the plan; 



(j) Review of the total plan for completeness and feasibility, 



for adequacy of provisions for evaluating its effectiveness at 



stated intervals after execution, and for foreseeable negative 



impacts or side-effects of carrying it out; and 



(k) Presentation and justification of the plan to those with 



authority to decide on its acceptance and to order that it be 



carried out. 

 There are many reasons for opposition to planning in a democratic 

 political system. Disagreement in any of the items of (a) through (k) 

 results in opposition to the process as a whole, and in a democratic 

 system "no" votes tend to carry more weight than do "yes" votes. 

 The size of the society itself impUes that plans are likely to be un- 

 manageably large in size and scope, and such plans are cumbersome 

 and imprecise. Definition of concrete and specific goals is sometimes 

 particularly difficult, and their acceptability is hard to attain. The 

 planning agents and the goals they choose may be partisan, and the 

 timing is thus finked to the electoral process rather than determined 

 by the inherent character and requirements of the plan itself. National 

 planning in the United States encounters one obstacle not widely 

 characteristic elsewhere: the fact that U.S. society has a pioneer 

 heritage and tradition in which self-reliance and individual planning 

 takes the place of large-group planning. » 



In consequence, the word "planned" takes on a somewhat pejora- 

 tive character when used in such terms as planned economy, planned 

 social change, and planned redistribution of populations or racial 

 groups. The idea of a "five year plan," as employed by the leadership 

 of the Soviet Union, is held in general disfavor in the United States. 

 The philosopher John Dewey, writing in 1939, observed that this 

 lisage of "planning" had led to its wide condemnation in free societies: 



What claims to be social planning [wrote Dewey] is now found in Communist 

 and Fascist countries. The social consequence is complete suppression of freedom 

 of inquiry, communication and voluntary association, by means of a combination 

 of personal violence, culminating in extirpation, and systematic partisan propa- 

 ganda. The results are such that in the minds of many persons the very idea of 

 social planning and of violation of the integrity of the individual are becoming 

 intimately bound together. (His emphasis.)^^ 



But Dewey does not dismiss planning as a legitimate function of 

 society. Indeed, he says, "Forethought and planning must come before 

 foresight." ^^' He makes an important distinction between the "planned 

 society" and the "continuously planning society." 



The former [he continues] requires fixed blueprints imposed from above and 

 therefore involving reliance upon physical and psychological force to secure con- 

 formity to them. The latter means the release of intelligence through the widest 

 form of cooperative give-and-take. The attempt to plan social organization and 

 association without the freest possible play of intelligence contradicts the very 

 idea in social planning. For the latter is an operative method of activitj', not a 

 predetermined set of final "truths." (His emphasis.)"" 



6" Joseph Ratner (ed.). Intelligence in the Modern World. John Dewey's Philosophy. New York, The 

 Modern Library, 1939, p. 431. 

 M» md., p. 954. 

 MO Ibid., pp. 431-432. 



