ABSTRACT
The British economy during the Second World War was planned to an extent greater than ever before or since and greater than the economy of any other capitalist democracy has been to date. The overriding objective was to mobilize the entire economy for the war effort. This was done in real not financial terms with all major allocations determined directly in physical units and financial flows subsequently shaped to parallel them. The absence of any need for a comprehensive, economy wide blueprint is an important lesson of British wartime planning. Decisions covering the economy as a whole were made only in relation to the allocation of resources between 'broad classes of uses military, home, export' and did not require detailed knowledge within each use. Manpower planning operated through a series of manpower surveys, starting in 1941, and manpower budgets based on them. Full employment in a capitalist society is dysfunctional for the economic system.
