Is a centrally planned economy fundamental to communism? Certainly some nominally communist governments like Vietnam and China have dropped it like hot rocks and things like price and wage controls are seen in our own country. Also, I am not aware that communist local governments are particularly calling for central planning. But isn’t it true that communism calls for the means of production to be held in common and therefore how to use these means is necessarily a function of government?
Thanks,
Rob
No, it isn’t. Yugoslavia was a ‘market communist’ state characterized by worker-owned firms competing in a largely market-based economy. Hungary from the 1960s onward also introduced some limited market elements into its economy (somewhat flexible prices, a certain space for cooperative enterprises to compete, etc.).
Communism is essentially a doctrine about who owns the means of production, not about how enterprises determine wages, prices, or production targets, and it can be compatible with certain degree of market competition. Marx and Engels said rather little (for better or worse) about the mechanics of how a communist economy was to be run (other than, of course, the fact that there could be no capitalist class, and other than some vague principles about 'from each according to his ability, etc.", “the free development of each is the free development of all”, the bit in the German Ideology about being a worker during the day and a fisherman in the afternoon, etc.).