The Role of Planning in the Planned Economy

Trotsky's concept of planning was crucially different from Stalinist command economy in that it emphasized control by market and Soviet democracy as well as autonomy from the party. Trotsky essentially argued that planning needed to happen at the commanding heights of industry and it should be transferred from the party to Goss plan so essentially Trotsky was making a technocratic argument against the argument of management by politicians. The Marxian idea of the labor time calculation is totally missing from Trotsky’s concept of planning. It seems like they were really trying to optimize for churning out heavy industry stuff as fast as possible rather than optimizing for you know human flourishing of any sort.