The Adventures Of Creepins Socialism

National planning for the American economy has prompted serious discussions from very unlikely sources lately. Testifying before the Joint Economie Committee, Henry Ford II, chairman of the Ford Motor Co. said, "in my 30 years as a businessman, I have never before felt so uncertain and so troubled about the future of both my country and my company."

As a possible solution Ford suggested high level, long-term government planning to avoid shortages and deal with national economic needs. When warned that national planning could lead to the dreaded socialism, Ford acknowledged, but said planning was "worth the risk."

United Auto Workers President Leonard Woodcock followed Ford before the Joint Committee. He said, "We permit the planning for our national economy to be uncoordinated and essentially short-range. We need mechanisms by which to guide our economy in the direction prescribed by national policy."

That was pretty heavy language coming from a UAW president. Woodcock has been working fot months wiih a group in New York called the Initiative Committee for National Economie Planning which will soon unveil the first formal proposal for planning.

The Initiative Committee is comprised of such luminaries as avowed-socialisl John Kenneth Galbraith of Harvard, Robert Heilhbroner of the New School for Social Research, Anne Carter of Brandeis University, and conservative Robert V. Rossa, former undersecretary of the Treasury and now a partner in the banking firm of Brown Bros., Harriman & Co.

Hubert Humphrey, chairman of the Joint Committee, and other congressional liberals are all a-tizzy over this support from business and labor. Among liberals and some moderates, planning is considered necessary to do away with production of unnecessary things and the waste of valuable energy and resources, and to force private enterprise to become more responsive to national needs.

Free Enterprise freaks and hard core capitalists have no fear. The ruling class is not about to sponsor a revolution. The critical question is, and will be, who will plan the planned economy? And for whose benefit will it be planned?