Command Economy Quotes

• A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

  Karl Marx

  Wisdom, Income, Politics

  BookCaps, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (2012). “The Communist Manifesto in Plain and Simple English”, p.84, BookCaps Study Guides

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• What happened to the Soviet Union happened mainly for domestic reasons. It was a failure of the model based on a command economy and dictatorship. The rejection of freedom and democracy, the decisionmaking monopoly of one party, and the monopoly of one ideology all had a chilling effect on the country. That model turned out to be incapable of making structural changes. It did not open up ways for initiative and was overly centralized.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Country, Party, Rejection

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the Soviet economy is proof that a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.

  Paul Samuelson

  Economy, Proof, Function

  5 Copy quote

• What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth...The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth.

  Paul Samuelson

  Powerful, Doubt, Growth

  14 Copy quote

• The problems of the global economy are not based in perception, but in the reality of prices, balance sheets and income statements, vast concentrations of wealth and power, precarious systemic imbalances, ruthless exploitation, and command economies mismanaged by Central State/Bank policy and manipulation.

  Charles Hugh Smith

  Reality, Concentration Of Wealth, Perception

  "The 'Uncredible' Dog And Pony Show: Merkel And Sarkozy" by Charles Hugh Smith, www.businessinsider.com. October 10, 201.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the signs of the imminent Apocalypse is the "bitterness of all waters," and anyone traveling through eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and its satellites-everywhere that the command economy operated, with its callous disregard for anything but narrow-focused abstract principle-could be forgiven for thinking that the Apocalypse was no longer imminent but in full cry. There's hardly a river, stream, or brook that isn't contaminated with the runoff from human misuse, whether industrial effluents, agricultural pesticides and herbicides, or worse.

  Marq de Villiers

  Thinking, Europe, Rivers

  Marq De Villiers (2001). “Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource”, p.87, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

  Show source