Socialist Renewal:

Lessons from the

"Calculation"
Debate

t:

FIKRET ADAMAN AND PAT DEVINE

crisis of confidence confronting socialists today

has various causes. The most insistent, immediate reason is the historic failure of the Soviet model, with
the attendant disintegration of country after country formerly
within the Soviet sphere of influence, and the precipitate
attempts of the ruling elites in these countries to restore or
create some form of capitalism. In the short term, this experience has placed all socialists on the defensive, including
those who have long criticized the Soviet model in the name
of socialism itself. This might be expected to pass as the
realities of "actually existing" global capitalism make themselves felt. Indeed, the removal of the Soviet model of "actually existing" socialism from the historical stage creates
space for the emergence of alternative, non-oppressive visions of socialism, more in line with the values of human
freedom and emancipation historically associated with the
socialist project.
However, the prevailing crisis of confidence in the possibility of socialism is not just due to the Soviet experience
and the absence of any examples of socialism in practice.
It is also, and in the long run more seriously, due to the
absence of any convincing theoretical model of how a socialist society, and in particular a socialist economy, might
be organized. Important insights into the requirements of
such a model can be gained from a re-examination of the
"economic calculation" (or wirtschaftsrechnung) debate that
Studies in Political Economy 43, Spring 1994

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took place during the 1920s and 1930s and revived during
the 1980s. The debate was about whether rational economic
calculation was possible under socialism - defined as state
ownership of the means of production. Its principal protagonists were economists from the Austrian school, who denied
the possibility, and socialist economists, most notably Oskar
Lange, who affirmed it.
Until recently the calculation debate was regarded primarily as part of the history of economic thought, having
little relevance to the actual problems of constructing a socialist economy in practice. In the 1980s, however, the situation began to change. On the one hand, growing awareness
of the systemic problems of the Soviet model led to a renewed interest in market socialism and the emergence of a
modem school of market socialism, tracing its roots back
to Lange's model. This has become the predominant paradigm within which work on the economics of socialism is
currently being undertaken.! On the other hand, a modem
neo-Austrian school began to contest the standard account
of the calculation debate, arguing that it is based on a misunderstanding of the original Austrian challenge.s and that
a proper understanding of the Austrian position finally disposes of any possibility of an effective economic system
not based on private property and markets - including, of
course, modem market socialism.I
This paper seeks to draw some lessons from the calculation debate, both the original and its recent revival, for
the renewal of socialism. Part one contends that the arguments of all the major protagonists in the original debate
were problematic as they were set largely within a static
neoclassical framework. This is developed through an examination of the work of Maurice Dobb, whose largely ignored contribution to the debate first addressed the limits
of this framework, and through an analysis of the arguments
of the neo-Austrian school, which approached the issue in
a very different manner. We argue that Dobb made a signal
contribution in identifying the limits of Lange's celebrated decentralized model. Lange failed to address the unavoidable uncertainty associated with atomistic decision making, especially
in relation to investment, a feature which Dobb emphasized
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in his arguments on behalf of central planning. The principle

insight of the neo-Austrians, on the other hand, lies in their
recognition of the importance of tacit knowledge. This was
also implicit in the original Austrian position.
The second part of the paper assesses the overall positions
of Dobb and the neo-Austrians. We suggest that the neoAustrians' advocacy of capitalism as the only effective way
of mobilizing tacit knowledge fails to confront satisfactorily
the insights of Dobb's contribution concerning the inefficiencies of atomistic decision making. Dobb's analysis, however, fails to recognize the importance of tacit knowledge,
making his advocacy of central planning unconvincing as it
stands. The paper ends by arguing that a process of participatory planning enables both the social mobilization of tacit
knowledge and the ex ante coordination of major interdependent decisions - indeed, that each is a necessary condition for the other.
Part One: Two Analytic Failures in the Historical "Neoclassical" Debate Although the challenge to the possibility
of rational economic calculation under socialism came primarily from two prominent Austrians, Mises and Hayek, it
was taken up primarily by socialist economists operating
within a neoclassical framework. These "neoclassical" socialists interpreted the challenge as denying the possibility,
in the absence of real markets for means of production, of
arriving at a Pareto optimal static equilibrium. They, therefore, sought to show how equilibrium could be achieved
without such markets. The standard account of the debate
accepts this neoclassical interpretation of the issue at stake
and concludes that the socialists were successful in demonstrating that rational economic calculation is possible in an
economy based on state ownership of the means of production'
Mises' initial challenge was directed at a moneyless model
of socialism in which the allocation of all means of production was decided centrally. Without prices for means of production, he argued, there would be no way of calculating
costs and therefore no way of rationally allocating scarce
resources among alternative uses.f This was the issue taken
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up in the subsequent debate, with first centralized and then

decentralized solutions offered as responses to Mises' challenge. However, Mises also argued that the problem of economic calculation would not arise in a static state, but was
only an issue in conditions of change and uncertainty: "the
problem of economic calculation is of economic dynamics;
it is no problem of economic stattcs." It is this argument,
largely ignored in the historical debate, that is regarded by
today's neo-Austrians as his central point.
The centralized solutions to the problem of rational economic calculation were essentially developments of Walras'
analysis, in which a general equilibrium is reached through
a tatonuement procedure mediated by an imaginary auctioneer. The simultaneous equations underlying Walras' analysis
can, in theory, be solved directly, rather than through an
iterative process, provided that the data on production functions and the relevant utility function(s) are known. This
had already been demonstrated by Barone, using the mathematical techniques developed by Pareto, who showed that
his "Ministry of Production" would arrive at exactly the same
marginal equivalences as would a perfectly competitive market economy,"
Both Pareto and Barone emphasized the fact that although
it was analytically possible to solve their systems, it would
not be practically possible, due to insuperable informational
and computational problems. Despite this, however, the
standard account of the calculation debate attributes the practical argument against socialism above all to Hayek. This
is not really surprising, since Hayek gave much greater
prominence to the argument that the problems of data collection and analysis would be insuperable than did his predecessors.f Indeed, it was his emphasis on the practical problems that led the neoclassical advocates of the possibility
of rational calculation under socialism to conclude that
Hayek's position represented a retreat. Mises' claim of theoretical impossibility was regarded as a stronger objection
than the claim of practical impossibility.
The neoclassical socialists responded to the alleged practical
impossibility of rational calculation under socialism by developing decentralizedmodels that economizedon the information
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collecting and computing demands made on the Central Planning Board. The best known of these models is that of Lange,
perhaps the seminal work of market socialism.? In Lange's
preferred blueprint the Central Planning Board takes the
place of Walras' auctioneer. Wages and prices for consumer
goods are set in real markets but prices for means of production are announced by the Central Planning Board. Managers of state-owned enterprises and sectors treat prices
(market determined and Central Planning Board announced)
as parameters and follow two rules - minimize costs and
set price equal to marginal cost. Enterprises hire labour and
sell consumer goods in real markets, and buy and sell means
of production from/to one another in simulated (pseudo) markets. The Central Planning Board observes movements in
stocks of means of production and adjusts prices accordingly,
and this process of ex post coordination continues until an
equilibrium set of prices is reached. Thus, it was claimed,
rational economic calculation, resulting in a Pareto optimal
allocation of resources, was possible under conditions of
state-ownership of the means of production, just as it was
under conditions of private ownership. There were, of
course, many additional aspects to Lange's model, and many
problems with it have been identified, not least the question
of managerial motivation and, stemming from this, the need
for the Central Planning Board to monitor enterprise adherence to the rules. However, the standard account of the debate is that Lange's model and subsequent refinements settled the argument in favour of the possibility of rational
socialist calculation.
Thanks to the modem neo-Austrian school, we now know
that this interpretation can only be sustained within the static
equilibrium framework of the neoclassical paradigm, in
which two crucial sources of imperfection of knowledge are
assumed away and data are assumed to be given. Dobb and
the Austrians can be seen as having challenged this neoclassical analysis, but Dobb's main contribution was largely ignored, and the Austrians' position was not clarified sufficiently for its full significance to be understood.
Dobb's Insight For Dobb, when comparing capitalism and
socialism, "the essential contrast is between an economy
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Studies in Political Economy

where the multifarious decisions which rule production are

taken each in ignorance of all the rest, and the economy
where such decisions are coordinated and unified.t'U' His
major contribution to the economic calculation debate was
to argue that Lange and the other principal participants on
the socialist side missed the essence of socialism by a "narrowing of the focus of study to problems of exchange-relations,"ll and that this prevented them from understanding
that the central economic questions in relation to socialism
are primarily those of production and the treatment of dynamic problems. Dobb rejected the path of seeking to mimic
the working of the competitive market and argued instead
for planning.
Dobb's arguments for the advantages of planning may be
summarized as follows. First, when decision makers are atomized, as they necessarily are in the market mechanism,
the expectations, on the basis of which they make their decisions, are formed in a context of uncertainty. This uncertainty is unavoidable in an atomistic economy but can be
overcome by planning. In a market economy disequilibrium
can only be corrected after the event. It "is only reached
through the mechanism of fluctuations, which are themselves
conditioned by the uncertainties inherent in production for
a market when each autonomous decision is necessarily
'blind' in part with respect to related decisions."12 Economic
planning, by contrast, consists of an attempt to make interdependent decisions in a coordinated way, in advance of
any commitment of resources. As Dobb put it, "[t]he advantage of a planned economy per se consists in removing the
uncertainties inherent in a market with diffused and autonomous decisions, or it consists in nothing at all."13In response
to Lerner's argument that with the same degree of foresight
an atomistic and a planned economy would reach the same
result,14 Dobb replied, "[t]o speak of a competitive economy
achieving the same result, if it had the same degree of foresight, is to ignore the fact that its essential nature is that it
does not and cannot possess the same degree of foresight.t'I>
A second advantage of planned ex ante coordination, according to Dobb, arises in relation to external effects in production and consumption. Since interrelated decisions would
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Adaman & DevineIRenewing Socialism

be coordinated before they were implemented, it would be

possible to take account of the wider social effects of production that fall outside the balance sheet calculations of
atomized decision-making units. These social effects include
not only the influence that the development of one industry
or sector has on the possibilities for development of other
sectors, but also the external effects of infra structural development and of infant industries. Dobb also raised the
question of planning in relation to consumption, in order to
tackle the issues, among other things, of public goods and
externalities in consumption.
Thirdly, only through planning can things which figure
as "data" in a static context be converted into "variables"
in a dynamic framework. Among the decisions which Dobb
included in this category were those on the rate of investment, the distribution of investment between capital and consumer goods industries, the choice of techniques, the regional distribution of investment, the relative rates of growth
of transport, fuel and power, and of agriculture in relation
to industry, the rate of introduction of new products and
their character, and the degree of standardization or variety
in production that the economy at its stage of development
feels able to afford.! 6
In summary, the analysis of the necessary imperfections
of knowledge associated with the market process is what
underlies Dobb's case for planning in production and consumption. In his 1953 review of the calculation debate Dobb
notes,
the quintessential function of planning as an economic mechanism is that it is a means of substituting ex ante co-ordination
of the constituent elements in a scheme of development - i.e.
before decisions have been embodied in action and in actual
commitments - for the co-ordination ex post which a decentralized pricing system provides (via the "revising" effect of
price movements which are the subsequent, and generally delayed, effect of previous decisions, when the latter have borne
fruit in actual input- or output-changes).17

The Neo-Austrians' Insight There is disagreement, or at least

a difference of emphasis, among modem neo-Austrians about
the extent to which Mises and Hayek were themselves re69

Studies in Political Economy

sponsible for the fact that their socialist opponents in the

economic calculation debate interpreted their challenge
within the neoclassical framework. Lavoie, the principal exponent of the revisionist interpretation of the debate, argues
that the learning and discovery aspects of the market mechanism, the hallmark of the modem neo-Austrians' analysis
and the aspects that, above all, distinguish the Austrian from
the neoclassical position, were already present in the early
contributions of Mises and Hayek.lf
Kirzner, on the other hand, suggests that the underlying
Austrian position was developed
through the wirtschaftsrechnung
debate and only crystallized into a coherent
and complete analysis in the later contributions of Mises
and Hayek in the 1940s. Indeed, Kirzner argues that neither
Mises nor Hayek were aware in the 1930s of just how sharply
the Austrian concepts differed from those of the neoclassical
school. He quotes Mises, writing in 1933, as follows:
the Austrian and the Anglo-American Schools and the School
of Lausanne ...differ only in their mode of expressing the same
fundamental idea and ...are divided more by their terminology
and by peculiarities of presentation than by the substance of
their teachings.ts

However, while there may be differences over the extent

to which the Austrian contributions of the 1920s and 1930s
anticipated subsequent developments, there is broad agreement among modem neo-Austrians about the distinctive features of their present analysis. The fundamental weakness
of the neoclassical school is seen as its assumption that information on prices and costs is objectively given. Instead,
the neo-Austrians argue, knowledge is essentially subjective
and can only be discovered in the course of competition,
with the corollary that this inarticulate or tacit knowledge
can neither be objectified and codified nor transferred. This
Austrian notion of subjectivism, arising from the continuously changing environment, the dynamics of adjustment,
and the inherent unpredictability of human activity, is a much
wider concept than that of the neoclassical approach, which
restricts subjectivism to price theory.

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According to the modem Austrian school, the economic

problem is not, as the neoclassical school maintains, the
allocation of limited resources among limitless wants, but
rather the question of how dispersed and fragmented knowledge can be socially mobilized. In this context, the function
of the market process in coordinating the use of dispersed
knowledge, and the activity of entrepreneurs operating in
conditions of uncertainty, are complementary ways of understanding the same reality. The market mechanism is conceptualized as selecting the efficient from inefficient, on the
basis of how well they respond to the information signalled
about potentially profitable opportunities, and rewarding
them accordingly. The crucial point is that the function of
the market mechanism is not to achieve equilibrium but to
transmit information and provide incentives. The transmission of knowledge is not a passive activity. Competition
motivates the mobilization of knowledge about more efficient ways of utilizing the factors of production. Thus, in
the Austrian view, rivalrous entrepreneurial activity, allocating and reallocating resources to meet constantly changing
conditions, is the most important characteristic of economic
life. As Barry puts it, in the Austrian paradigm, "competition
and entrepreneurship explain how an economy moves
through time; how it is that through a process of evolutionary
adaptation dispersed knowledge is coordinated so that an
order is produced."20
The modem Austrian position has been clearly summarized by Lavoie. He identifies three "cognitive functions of
markets" - computation, incentive and discovery. The first
two functions are recognized by both Austrians and neoclassicals, but for the Austrians
[w]hat is crucial to [the market's] cognitivefunction ...is that
it provides a discoveryprocess that by its very nature cannot
be centrallydirectedbut dependson a bidirectionalcommunicative interplaybetweenits participants.z!
This discovery process is crucial because it "produces a kind
of social intelligence that depends on, but goes beyond, the
individual intelligence of the system's llarticillants."22 It follows from this analysis that, as Kirzner puts it,
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[i]nstead of judging policies or institutional arrangements in

terms of the resource-allocation pattern they are expected to
produce (in comparison with the hypothetically optimum pattern), we can now understand the possibility of judging them
in terms of their ability to promote discovery.23
To summarize the argument so far, two analytic failures
have been identified in the neoclassical socialists' solution
to the problem of rational economic calculation: first, the
failure to address the uncertainty confronting atomized decision makers that arises from ignorance of one another's
interdependent actions (as pointed out by Dobb); and, second, the failure to address the uncertainty inherent in the
subjective nature of tacit knowledge, which can only be discovered by a process of social interaction among individuals
(as pointed out by the Austrians). However, the responses
of Dobb and the Austrians to the failures they identified are
diametrically opposed. Dobb seeks to remove the uncertainty
necessarily associated with atomized decision making by replacing the market process with planned coordination ex
ante, and assumes that the relevant information can be centrally gathered and processed in one way or another. The
Austrians, by contrast, insist that only the market process,
based on the rivalrous actions of individual entrepreneurs,
can discover and mobilize the potential of dispersed tacit
knowledge. They accept that the ex post coordination of the
market mechanism involves inefficiencies due to mistakes,
but argue that this is inherent in the nature of economic
reality. As Kirzner puts it,
[t]o describethe competitiveprocess as wastefulbecause it corrects mistakes only after they occur seems similar to ascribing
the ailment to the medicine which heals it, or even blaming the
diagnostic procedure for the disease it identifies.24
Part Two: A Resolution of Two Insights - Participatory
Democratic Planning The insights of both Dobb and the
(modem) Austrians are powerful. At the risk of over simplification it could be said that, at a technical level, Dobb's insight
identifies the fundamental systemic problem of capitalism,25
while the Austrians' insight identifies the fundamental systemic problem of centralized administrative command
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Adaman & DevineIRenewing Socialism

planning. Yet Dobb's advocacy of central planing fails to

address the Austrians' insight, and the Austrians' advocacy
of the capitalist market fails to address Dobb's insight. Participatory democratic planning (unlike market socialism) offers a way of combining the two insights.26
The participatory planning alternative seeks to combine
planning with the articulation of tacit knowledge. At first
sight, such a task seems impossible. Planning, for Dobb,
involves restrictions on the autonomy of enterprises and
hence seemingly affords little scope for economic agents to
participate actively in decision-making processes in order
to discover and articulate their tacit knowledge. The way in
which the Austrians understand the process of discovery and
articulation categorically rules out planning. The contradiction arises, however, because in neither context do there
exist institutions to facilitate participation. Instead, people
are subject to the coercive power of either administrative
commands from the hierarchically organized planning
mechanism or market forces operating with inherently unpredictable and unintended consequences.
Democratic participatory planning is postulated as a process in which the values and interests of people in all aspects
of their lives interact and shape one another through negotiation and cooperation. This process enables tacit knowledge
to be discovered and articulated, and economic decisions to
be consciously planned and coordinated on the basis of that
knowledge. However, for a process of participatory planning
to be possible, two prerequisites can be identified.
First, people must have access to the material and personal
resources that are necessary for their participation in the
social process of discovery to be real. This highlights a striking paradox in the Austrians' position. While correctly insisting on the universal importance of tacit knowledge, they
also insist that such knowledge can only be discovered by
entrepreneurs competing in a market process based on private ownership. This necessarily excludes the tacit knowledge potential of non-entrepreneurs from the social process
of discovery and mobilization. At the level of the enterprise
this omission might be overcome by various forms of worker
participation. But such arrangements, although a move in
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the right direction, do not deal with the tacit knowledge of

people outside the enterprise. It follows that if Kirzner's
criterion for judging institutional arrangements ("their ability
to promote discovery") is adopted, there is a prima facie
case that market processes based on private ownership are
socially inefficient. A set of institutional arrangements that
generalizes access to the resources needed for participation
in the social process of discovery would not only be more
democratic and more just, but also more efficient.
The second prerequisite for participatory planning is that
decision making at all levels takes place through a participatory process involving all those affected by the decision.
This, of course, contrasts sharply with the Austrian position
in which participation is confined to the micro level. For
Austrians, this is not a matter of choice but a necessary fact
of life. As Hayek puts it:
The main point of emphasisis that the conflict between, on the
one hand, advocates of the spontaneousextended human order
created by a competitive market, and, on the other hand, those
who demand a deliberate arrangementof human interaction by
central authority based on collective command over available
resources,is due to a factual error by the latter about how knowledge of these resources is and can be generated.27
However it is mere assertion to state that social processes
of discovery can only take the form of rivalrous behaviour
in markets based on private ownership. Participatory planning at each level of decision making would enable knowledge of previously unarticulated interests, possibilities and
interdependencies to be discovered and rendered transparent,
through a process of social interaction among those affected.
It is precisely this possibility that enables' a more general
social mobilization of tacit knowledge than that envisaged
by the Austrians to be combined with the ex ante coordination of major interdependent decisions that Dobb considered
to be the essence of planning. At the same time, participatory
planning, unlike Dobb's concept of planning, is not vulnerable to the Austrian critique that central planning is premised
on a misunderstanding of the tacit nature of knowledge.

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The two prerequisites for participatory planning may be

linked by the concept of social ownership.28 Social ownership is neither private ownership nor state ownership, but
rather ownership by those who are affected by the use of
the assets involved. The principle underlying the concept of
social ownership is that the right to decide on the use of
assets should be vested in those who are affected by the
decisions. The people who are affected by decisions over
the use of assets will vary according to the assets involved,
and the type of decision in question. Thus, the set of people
who are affected by the use of the assets of an individual
enterprise will be less inclusive than the set of people who
are affected by the interdependent investment decisions of
the industry to which the enterprise belongs. Social ownership at the level of the enterprise, defining the set of people
who participate in enterprise decision making, will be different from social ownership at the level of the industry,
where a wider set of people would participate. Similarly,
participatory planning at the level of a national economy,
would involve social ownership and decision making by
those affected by the decisions taken at those levels (or by
their representatives).
Several models that incorporate participation and differing
degrees of planning have recently been developed,29 a recurring theme in discussion of these models has been the
question of their ability to deal with innovation. This is the
obverse of the claim that generalized participation would
result in a more efficient social mobilization of tacit knowledge than that resulting from the private entrepreneurial activity celebrated by the Austrians. The incentive to innovate
within one possible participatory institutional structure has
been elaborated elsewhere.J? In the context of this paper,
however, the importance of a process for discovering the
tacit, qualitative, knowledge of people about how they would
be affected by innovation in their various roles - as producers, consumers, citizens, members of different communities - cannot be overemphasized. Such knowledge, combined with the available scientific knowledge about the most
lik.ely impact of innovation on the environment, is likely to

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be an essential input into the process of negotiating a more

sustainable relationship between economy and ecology.
The intellectual climate of our postmodern age discounts
the possibility of purposeful, rational human action. Planning, understandably, has come to be associated with grand
designs gone wrong. The sobering experience of the Soviet
experiment has reinforced Hayek's judgement of socialism
as "The Fatal Conceit," and his advocacy of a more modest
"spontaneous extended human order." Socialists must take
this challenge seriously.U
However, we do not think this is an insurmountable challenge. The key to any future that socialism may have is
likely to be found in the concept of participatory democracy.
With respect to a socialist economy this concept makes it
possible to render the Austrian insight into the nature of
knowledge compatible with planning. This does not negate
but rather reinforces the underlying belief of socialists in
the ability of people to create a self-governing society of
self-activating subjects.
Notes
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

76

A. Nove, The Economics of Feasible Socialism (London: Allen &

Unwin, 1983); J. Le Grand and S. Estrin (008.), Market Socialism
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1989); P. Bardhan and J. Roemer, "Market Socialism: A Case For Rejuvenation," Journal of Economic Perspectives
(1992).
W. Keizer, "Recent Reinterpretations of the Socialist Calculation Debate," Journal of Economic Studies (1989); D. Lavoie, "A Critique
of the Standard Account of the Socialist Calculation Debate," Journal
of Libertarian Studies (1981); K. Vaughn, "Economic Calculation
under Socialism," Economic Inquiry (1980).
D. Lavoie, "Computation, Incentives and Discovery," in J. Prybyla
(ed.), Privatising and Marketising Socialism, Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science (London: Sage, 1990).
A. Bergson, "Socialism," in H. Ellis, A Survey of Contemporary Economics (New York: Blakiston, 1948); Lavoie, "A Critique of the
Standard Account..."; D. Lavoie, Rivalry and Central Planning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
L. von Mises, "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth," [orig. 1920] in F. von Hayek, Collectivist Economic Planning
(London: Routledge, 1935).
L. von Mises, Socialism (New York: Jonathan Cape, 1936), p. 139.

Adaman & DevineIRenewing Socialism

7.
8.
9.

10.
11.

12.

13.
14.
15.
16.

17.
18.
19.

20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.

26.

27.
28.
29.

30.
31.

E. Barone, "The Ministry of Production in the Collectivist State,"

[orig. 1908] in Hayek Collectivist Economic Planning.
F. von Hayek, "The Present State of the Debate," in idem, Collectivist
Economic Planning.
O. Lange, "On the Economic Theory of Socialism," in B. Lippincott
(ed.), On the Economic Theory of Socialism (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1938).
M. Dobb, Political Economy and Capitalism (London: Routledge,
1937).
M. Dobb, "Economists and the Economics of Socialism," [orig. 1939]
in idem, On Economic Theory and Socialism (London: Routledge,
1955).
M. Dobb, "Review" [of B. Brutzkus, Economic Planning in Soviet
Russia (London: Routledge, 1935); and Hayek, Collectivist Economic
Planning], Economic Journal (1935), p. 535.
Ibid.
A. Lerner, "Economic Theory and Socialist Economy," Review of
Economic Studies (1934).
M. Dobb, "Economic Theory and Socialist Economy: A Reply," Review of Economic Studies (1935), p. 150.
M. Dobb, "A Review of the Discussion Concerning Economic Calculation in a Socialist Economy," in idem, On Economic Theory and
Socialism, pp. 77 et seq.
Ibid., p. 76.
Lavoie, Rivalry and Central Planning.
L. von Mises, Epistemological Problems of Economics (1933), p.
214, cited in I. Kirzner, "The Economic Calculation Debate: Lessons
for Austrians," Review of Austrian Economics (1988), p. 9.
N. Barry, ''The 'Austrian' Perspective," in D. Whynes (ed.), What Is
Political Economy? (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984).
Lavoie, "Computation, Incentives and Discovery," p. 74.
Ibid., p. 78.
Kirzner, "The Economic Calculation Debate...," p. 13.
I. Kirzner, Competition and Entrepreneurship (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 232.
And also of market socialism; See P. Devine, "Market Socialism or
Participatory Planning?" Review of Radical Political Economics
(1992).
F. Adaman, "A Critical Evaluation of the Economic Calculation Debate with Special Reference to Maurice Dobb's Contribution," (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences,
University of Manchester, 1993).
F. von Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, edited
by W. Bartley (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 7.
P. Devine, Democracy and Economic Planning (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1988).
M. Albert and R. Hahnel, The Political Economy of Paricipatory
Economics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Devine,
Democracy and Economic Planning; D. Elson, "Market Socialism or
Socialization of the Market," New u:ft Review 172 (1988).
Devine, "Market Socialism or Participatory Planning?"
Hayek, The Fatal Conceit. ...

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