Extremely rare book

INTRODUCTION

"Where there is no free market, there is no pricing system; without a pricing system, there is no economic calculation."

With these words, written in 1920, Professor Ludwig von Mises dismissed the possibility of economic calculation in a socialist society where the government owns or con- trols all factors of production. This means that there is neither free market nor competitive pricing under socialism. Thus, there can be no economic calculation in a socialist society. Pointing this out is one of Mises' major contributions.

Some early socialists noted Mises' criticism of their doctrine and tried to answer him. In an essay (1936), Oskar Lange, a Marxian professor of economics who later became Ambassador from Poland to the U. S. and to the U. N., and who was a member of the Polish Politburo at his death in 1965, even proposed that the socialists erect a statue of Dr. Mises. "For it was his powerful challenge that forced the socialists to recognize the importance of an adequate system of economic accounting to guide the allocation of resources in a socialist economy."*

Mises' reasoning, that economic calculation is not pos- sible without free market pricing, has certainly been borne out by reports emanating from Russia. Attempts made since Lange, to allocate resources within socialist countries so as to reduce economic malproduction, have only led to noticeable mal-investments, production bot- tlenecks and shoddy merchandise. In the effort to re- duce such economic imbalances, Yevsei G. Liberman and others have urged Russian planners to improvise a quasi profit-and-loss system. However, they fail to compre- hend what Mises pointed out, namely that profits and losses cannot be known in the absence of private owner-

*"On the Economic Theory of Socialism" printed in the book of that title, edited by Benjamin E. Lippincott (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1938), p.57.

Mises' early files and records disappeared when his per- sonal library in Vienna was ransacked shortly after Hitler's army invaded Austria in 1938. Thus, it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to compile this bibliography without the list of articles prepared by his Vienna secretary, Mrs. Theresia Thie- beger. Some of the early articles are practically un- obtainable now and a few may be lost forever. However, many of the recent ones are available from this Founda tion, publisher since 1956 of THE FREEMAN and of the twelve volumes of ESSAYS ON LIBERTY (1952-1965).

emology,

This bibliography, originally prepared for presentation at Dr. Mises' 80th anniversary dinner in 1961, has now been updated and made as accurate and as complete as possible as of December 1969. However, even Dr. Mises himself cannot say for sure whether or not there are omissions.

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