Discovering the meaningful middle ground

The whole crux of economic life - and indeed life in general - is that it constantly requires the living reconiciliation of opposites, which, in strict logic, are irreconciliable. In macro-economics (the management of whole societies) it is necessary always to have both planning and freedom - not by way of a weak and lifeless compomise, but by a free recognition of the legitimacy of and need for both. Equally in micro-economics (the management of individual enterprises); on the one hand it is essential that there should be full managerial responsibility and authority; yet it is equally essential that there shoudl be a democratic and free participation of the workers in management decisions. Again, it is not a question of mitigating the opposition of these two needs by some half-hearted compromise that satisfies neither of them, but to recognize them both. The normal answer to either is a swing of the pendulum to the other extreme. Yet the normal answer is not the only possible answer. A generous and magnanimous intellectual effort - the oppostie of nagging, malevolent criticism - can enable a society, at least for a period, to find a middle way that reconciles the opposites without degrading them both. There are no 'final solutions' to this kind of problem. There is only a living solution achieved day by day on a basis of a clear recognition that both opposites are valid.