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→Marxist roots: Added characteristics of a centrally planned system
Critics, who generally tend to be pro Free-market argue that the only economic planning that government should engage in is providing a framework for the economy to operate, such as sufficient [[infrastructure]] and the maintenance of [[law]] and [[order]]
Critics, who generally tend to be pro Free-market argue that the only economic planning that government should engage in is providing a framework for the economy to operate, such as sufficient [[infrastructure]] and the maintenance of [[law]] and [[order]]
==Characteristics of a centrally planned economy==
A centrally planned economic model is when all aspects of the economy are organized from the state or central decision making authority. It is largely an obsolete model, with [[Cuba]], [[Vietnam]] and [[North Korea]] remaining the only committed centrally planned economies. [[China]], a so-called ‘communist’ state has opened up its economy more and more to free enterprise and away from the centrally planned model.
It is based off the doctrines of [[Karl Marx]], most notable of which being ''From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs''. Essentially this involves an equal distribution of wealth. Unlike in a free market [[Capitalism|capitalist]] country, a centrally planned economy provides services such as healthcare and education to the people free of charge. Citizens of a centrally planned economy enjoy better health and education standards than in many other countries, but often at the expense of many individualistic freedoms associated with [[Free Market]] economies of the west.
Similarly, the state would nationalize all factories and industries. In the Soviet Union’s case under Stalin, Industrial production increased by many hundred percent and at the height of its industrial production the centrally planned model had insured that the [[Soviet Union]] went from being one of the least industrialized areas of Europe to being the second most industrialized economy second only to the United States of America. However, following [[World War Two]] the global economy changed dramatically away from the old heavy industrial system to a more light, plastic orientated industrial system. The Soviet Union concentrated on continuing high levels of industrial production at the expense of producing consumer goods. The inefficient state bureaucracy failed to keep in line with consumer demands and changing consumer tastes, and this was one of the major flaws in the Centrally planned model. The centrally planned model also disagrees with individualism and focuses on collective responsibility. This more often than not coincided with repression of civil liberties and a corrupt totalitarian state. The fact that the old Soviet Union collapsed and was replaced with free market economics in the former states of the USSR is perhaps a testament to the failure of the centrally planned model.
==Marxist roots==
==Marxist roots==
James Burnham, a former [[Trotskyite]], discovered in 1941 that the "workers revolution" which allegedly was to overthrow the capitalist "exploiters," was in real practice a "managerial revolution" which replaced older 19th century owners of capital with twentieth century technocrats and managers. Burnham found that "workers in this mythical 'workers' state' were, the facts showed, a subject class far more heavily exploited than the workers under capitalism," and that the new managers in a planned economy "have curbed the masses and have instituted a social structure in which they are on top, not by virtue of private property rights in the instruments of production, but through their monopoly control of a state power which has fused with the economy." <ref>''The Managerial Revolution'', James Burnham, Indiana University Press, Bloomingham 1966.</ref>
James Burnham, a former [[Trotskyite]], discovered in 1941 that the "workers revolution" which allegedly was to overthrow the capitalist "exploiters," was in real practice a "managerial revolution" which replaced older 19th century owners of capital with twentieth century technocrats and managers. Burnham found that "workers in this mythical 'workers' state' were, the facts showed, a subject class far more heavily exploited than the workers under capitalism," and that the new managers in a planned economy "have curbed the masses and have instituted a social structure in which they are on top, not by virtue of private property rights in the instruments of production, but through their monopoly control of a state power which has fused with the economy." <ref>''The Managerial Revolution'', James Burnham, Indiana University Press, Bloomingham 1966.</ref>