Review of Boettke, Candela, and Truitt: The Socialist Calculation Debate

Boettke, Candela, and Truitt (2024) is in the 'Cambridge elements: Austrian economics' series. It is 85 pages

The first chapter is an overview. Von Neumann, Kantorvich, and Leontief are mentioned. The authors acknowledge that current scholarship rejects the revisionism of Don Lavoie, which seemed to have won around the time of the fall of the Soviet Union. Chapter 2 is a recap of the original debate. Chapter 3 presents the views of Hayek, including in rebuttal of Lange and Lerner. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom is emphasized, including some negative reviews. Chapter 4 goes into Lavoie's revisionism and some socialist responses. Chapter 5 is mostly the authors' response to cybersocialist proposals. They say contemporary scholars miss the point. Tacit knowledge of time and space does not even exist without a price system. Chapter 6 is about economists you might not realize were inspired by the calculation argument. This includes Buchanan and public choice, Coase and transaction costs, and Alchian and evolutionary arguments. Kirzner is also mentioned, but you would expect him. Chapter 7 is a two-page conclusion.

I do not understand this book series. Entries in it are short and cannot be comprehensive. This book does not mention Barone's paper, before Von Mises. It does not mention any literature or arguments distinguishing Hayek's and Von Mises' arguments. Instead, Hayek is treated as if his argument is continuous with Von Mises. It is, I think, unclear on welfare comparisons. I know that Von Mises or Hayek were supposedly clear that they were not making claims about maximizing a social welfare function or about Pareto optimality. I do not know why David Ramsay Steele is not referenced.

I appreciate the references, but I do not think one can get a clear understanding of the arguments against Von Mises or Hayek. Some of the references were new to me. Trying to explain general equilibrium theory (GET) shortly is a challenge. The importance of the socialist calculation argument can be seen in motivating developments in GET. I also do not see how you can understand more current arguments about computational complexity from this book

I am not sure one can fully understand Von Mises or Hayek's arguments, either. The authors accurately notes that Von Mises grants the planners knowledge of the prices of consumer goods, as coming from a market just for them (pp. 17-18). And, on p. 24, Von Mises grants the planner 'complete information about the technological possibilities of their era'. As far as I am concerned, Von Mises' argument is invalid.

But, on p. 24-25, the authors take it back. They say, Mises had his argument 'under constant refinement in articulation of the details.' Supposedly, Hayek's emphasis on disequilibrium is also in Von Mises, specifically, in his argument about socialist calculation.

Strangely enough, this book has Hitler as a socialist, along with Stalin and Mao. The book echoes Hayek's assertion that socialists created the intellectual climate for Nazis. The historical dubiousness of this claim is not noted. Following Hirschman, I think The Road to Serfdom is a jeopardy argument. I agree with the authors that it is not an argument about a slippery slope, a kind of perversity argument.

I think this book must be directed to those who already have quite a background. It does not have the space to back up its assertions with a scholarly apparatus. Maybe it is for those who already have quite a background, but want to find out more about 21st-century arguments, particularly the reactions of some economists of the Austrian school to them. The book has no index.

References

• Barone, Enrico. 1908, 1935. The ministry of production in the collectivist state. (Tr. in Collectivist Economic Planning (ed. by F. A. Hayek).
• Bockman, Johanna. 2011. Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press.
• Boettke, Peter, Rosolino A. Candela, and Tegan L. Truitt. 2024. The Socialist Calculation Debate. Cambridge University Press.
• Steele, David Ramsay. 1999. From Marx to Mises: Post Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court.