Summary — During the Second World War, in Great Britain, an economic planning machinery was set up in order to face the wartime challenges. The good results of this machinery were considered by the leaders of the Labour Party and by a number of political thinkers as a proof that planning economy for national aims was possible and useful. During the war, economic planning was used to defeat Nazis; after the war, in their opinion, it could serve to defeat poverty, malnutrition and unemployment. Among the most prominent of the economists and intellectuals who aimed to transform economic planning for the war into economic planning for peace, there were William. Beveridge, Karl Mannheim, Harold Laski and Barbara Wootton.

However, not every economist in Great Britain was enthusiastic about the idea of planning the economy: the liberal intellectual Friedrich von Hayek, for example, in 1944 published the famous book The Road to Serfdom against the issue of economic planning. Hayek suggested that, in any complex society, there are not objectives about which all people can agree.

Thus, any economic policy the Government would foster, would meet the opposition of a large part of the population. In this situation no economic planning could be carried out without the suppression of the opponents by violence and the establishment of a dictatorship.

Barbara Wootton responded to Hayek in 1945, writing the essay Freedom under Planning. She agreed with Hayek that there aren’t common objectives in the complex societies of 20^th century, but this doesn’t mean that there is not a common good about which all people could agree. Barbara Wootton stated that everyone considers it important — for example — to eradicate malnutrition, unemployment and lack of education. Consequently, in Barbara Wootton's opinion, people would be ready to approve policies to combat those evils even if they wouldn’t profit by them. In other words, she was convinced that even if there are not any shared interests in societies, there are some common agreements about what is to be- considered good and what is to be fought. That is why Barbara Wootton thought that economic planning for common aims wouldn’t meet any strong opposition by people and wouldn’t lead to dictatorship.