Lapsansky-Werner   pg.817 Origin of Command Economy

• Are centrally planned economic systems
• Also includes Socialist and Communist(for countries who are for socialism or for communism.)
• In the 1800s, criticism of captialism by Karl Marx and others led to calls for distributing wealth according to need.

Lapsansky-Werner   pg. 817  Locations Today that uses Command Economy

• Communist countries includes: China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam.
• These countries feel as if their fellow country is better off by using Command Economy, instead of a Market and Mixed Economy.

Lapsansky-Werner  pg. 817 Description of the Command Economy

• Central governments planners uses most economic decisions for the people of their countries.
• Some businesses uses private enterprise, but the government of that specific country dominates the businesses.

Lapsansky-Werner pg. 456 Mobilizing Industry in WWII

• Roosevelt and the other Allied leaders knew that American production would play a key role in helping the Allies win the war
• America's industry had started to mobilize in response to the Lend-Lease Act.
• American production still needed to increase the rate at which in churned out war materials.

Lapsansky-Werner pg. 456 Mobilizing Industry(Continued)

• In January 1942, the government set up the War Production Board to oversee the conversion of peacetime industry to war industry.
• Government created a host of other angencies that worked together to allocate scarce materials into the proper industries.

Lapsansky-Werner pg.456 When Was Command Economy Used?

• Command Economy was used during World War II, was also adopted in the late 1980s as a descriptive category for the Soviet type of economic system.
• The concept of the command administrative economy is an elaboration of the analysis of the command economy, introduced to the study of the Soviet Union by Gregory Grossman in his seminal (1963) article, "Notes for a Theory of the Command Economy."

Lapsansky-Werner pg. 452 The Defining Feature of Command Economy

• The defining feature of such an economic system is the subordination of virtually all economic activity to state authority.
• That authority was represented in the Soviet Union by the sole legitimate political body, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which necessarily then assumed a leading, indeed determining, role in all legitimate economic activity.

Lapsansky- Werner pg. 452 Task of Directive-Based Centralized Planning for the Command Economy

• The task of directive-based centralized planning in this system was made feasible by aggregation at higher levels and by the delegation of elaboration of details of the plan to subordinate levels in the administrative hierarchy.
• Thus administrative organs at each level of the hierarchy (central, republic, regional, local, and operational [e.g., firm, farm, etc.]) were responsible for planning, supervision, and enforcement, and engaged in active bargaining with other levels in the hierarchy to develop an agreed plan of activity that in general met the needs and desires of the highest authorities.

Lapsansky-Werner et al. 453 Does Command Economy Inspire People?

• The experience of war communism, and the repeated attempts to mobilize and inspire workers and intellectuals to work toward the objectives of the Soviet Party and State, showed that the detailed planning and administration of commands were rather ineffective in dealing with the consumption, career, and work-choice decisions of individuals and households.

Lapsansky-Werner et al. 453   When and Where was Command Economy Used?

• America's response to World War II was the most extraordinary mobilization of an idle economy in the history of the world. During the war 17 million new civilian jobs were created, industrial productivity increased by 96 percent, and corporate profits after taxes doubled.
•  Command Economy led to the GI Bill, which helped lay the foundation for the remarkable postwar expansion that followed. The war also made us more of a middle-class society than we had been before.