Government by Acronym

Toward a Planned Society By Otis L. Graham Jr.

Oxford, 357 pp., $11.95 Nothing is so monotonous to behold as an idea whose time has passed. National planning is a concept which has been buffeted about by the winds of public discourse ever since the Great Depression first punched holes in many people’s confidence in traditional laissez-faire capitalism. Through the ensuing years, it has won many advocates and stealthily gained ground, riding the back of numerous government programs, even while disguising itself behind a shroud of bureaucratic euphemisms. Thus to argue today, as Otis L. Graham Jr. does in Toward a Planned Society, that we are at a crossroads at which we must decide finally to discard our traditional fears of government planning and take the plunge, would be like calling today for a staunch anti-Japanese foreign policy.

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Allen G. Weakland

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Toward a Planned Society By Otis L. Graham Jr.

Oxford, 357 pp., $11.95 Nothing is so monotonous to behold as an idea whose time has passed. National planning is a concept which has been buffeted about by the winds of public discourse ever since the Great Depression first punched holes in many people’s confidence in traditional laissez-faire capitalism. Through the ensuing years, it has won many advocates and stealthily gained ground, riding the back of numerous government programs, even while disguising itself behind a shroud of bureaucratic euphemisms. Thus to argue today, as Otis L. Graham Jr. does in Toward a Planned Society, that we are at a crossroads at which we must decide finally to discard our traditional fears of government planning and take the plunge, would be like calling today for a staunch anti-Japanese foreign policy.