Planning as a Social Technology. Yevgeni Preobrazhensky and the Prognosis for the Future

Abstract

Yevgeni A. Preobrazhensky was one of the main economists of Soviet Russia. In his analysis of the transition from the NEP to socialism we find structural elements of what the author calls plan-based thought. The concept of «socialist rationality» and «primitive socialist accumulation», the formulation of a «new economic and administrative science», the concept of planning as a result of «social rationalization» and the idea of «forecasting» as an expression of a specific conception of time that claims to impose the future in the present, are fundamental for understanding plan-based thought and its transformations on a global level.

Keywords

• preobrazhensky
• soviet plan
• social prognosis
• socialist rationality
• new economics