Economic planning was mainstream middle opinion in the 1930s, not a fringe radical idea.

Evidence

The idea of a planned economy as the answer to the ‘chaos of laissez-faire’ circulated as early as 1929 on the fringes of all British political parties, while the Soviet Union implemented its first Five Year Plan in 1928. “Planning is forced upon us,” wrote one of its most vocal promoters in 1933, “not for idealistic reasons, but because the old mechanism which served us when markets were expanding naturally and spontaneously is no longer adequate when the tendency is in the opposite direction … The economic system is out of gear,” concluded Harold Macmillan, echoing the Zeitgeist of post-1929 England. Such was the pervasiveness of planning that it became defined as the “middle opinion” of the 1930s, paving the way for the post-World War II consensus on the British welfare state. Its popularity owed to the apparent scientificity of its mechanism as well as to the promise of an engineered economy where control and reason would be restored at the hands of the state. The success of the experimental methods in the natural sciences provided a vivid case in point for reformers eager to rein in the growing complexity of the world economy, whereas the discipline of economics was seen to have failed to provide a coherent picture of the crisis or suitable remedies to cure it. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 65

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the refrain seen in neoliberal histories that planning ‘captured the centre’; useful for the manuscript’s throughline. — connects to: By the 1930s economic planning had acquired scientific credibility — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 76; In the 1930s pro-business thinkers themselves rejected free markets and laissez-faire. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 66; Planned economy rhetoric was the 1930s mainstream in Britain, not a fringe — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 65 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Was Macmillan’s career as a One Nation Conservative planner a useful case in the later ‘neoliberal turn’ against centrist planning?

Broader Connections

• By the 1930s economic planning had acquired scientific credibility #corroborates (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 76
• In the 1930s pro-business thinkers themselves rejected free markets and laissez-faire. #corroborates (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 66