Tokyo 1985 (1967)

From the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

To those of you who remember a few years ago the “double your standard of living in twenty-five years” promise from R. A. Butler, The Times, of 27.2.67 should have made interesting reading. It carried an article on page 5 about some of the promises being made currently to the workers of Tokyo. They certainly have a familiar ring.

No housing problems, no smog, a car for everyone of Tokyo’s 4,300,000 families—yet no traffic jams. And so on . . . But this is for twenty years time if they all work hard and if the economy continues to expand, conditions which no planners can control, but this does not stop them planning, of course. Incidentally, do you notice how these “plans” have a longer period set aside for their fulfilment now? No longer do we hear of “five year plans” which were so popular (particularly with left wingers) in the thirties and forties Such are the massive problems of modern capitalism that no “expert” can even pretend to solve them in such a short time.

So now we get a twenty (or 25 or 30) year plan superseded after a year or two by another twenty year plan. Which, in its turn is superseded, and so on. Which keeps workers on their toes in pleasurable expectation, the planers in business, and capitalism generally ticking over.