ABSTRACT
Within the limited context of debate between professional economists the Mises-argument can be said to have had importance as a refutation of the a priori impossibility of socialism that the Mises-school had tried to establish. Yet to the non-economist (not unnaturally) the controversy has generally seemed a meaningless one—a pseudo-problem created by the peculiar notions that economists are wont to use. The first stage of the discussion was concerned essentially with a very practical point: was the existence of a market, not only for consumers’ goods, but for producers’ goods (machines and raw material) as well, an essential condition of any economic calculation at all? Since there could be no market under socialism—at least, no market in any sense in which values were determined by the play of competitive bidding—socialism was ex natura irrational, if not impossible as a working system.
