In the earliest (mercantile) and again in the late stages of capitalist development, monopoly devices and state intervention try to gain some control over production. But they operate only in restricted fields, not in the total productive process, and even in narrow fields they never succeed in emancipating production altogether from the market. This is not surprising, for deliberate regulation of production as a whole (a “plan,” as it is called nowadays) would be incompatible with the nature of capitalism. It would destroy the commodity basis of the economy, the profit motivation, and the
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