At the Why Nations Fail blog, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson explain that central planning is not just a Marxist idea:
Essentially central planning is not about the efficient allocation of economic resources, it is about control.
Central planning maximizes the extent of control that the state, and the people running the state, exercise. The desire to control others is a constant in history and is part and parcel of the construction of states. If the state can grab all the land and resources and control who and on what terms people get access to them, then this maximizes control, even if it sacrifices economic efficiency.
This sort of economic and political control — not Marxist ideology — is what central planning is all about. This is not to deny that Marxist ideology supported and legitimized central planning in several 20th-century societies. But it is to emphasize that the emergence and persistence of central planning is often a solution to the central economic and political problem of many elites: to control and extract resources from society.
The people who push for central planning may say they’re trying to solve a problem, but the problem they say they’re trying to solve is just an excuse. They really just want to gain control over you.
