Oskar Lange wasn’t so stupid

While most scholars of the Interwar Debate on Socialism interpret Lange as having offered an answer to the problem of socialist economic calculation, evidence exists to the contrary. Lange’s thinking on calculation was more complex and less settled than commonly recognized. His 1936 and 1937 articles actually admitted to the impossibility of socialist calculation, but also asserted the impossibility of capitalist calculation. Lange’s thinking evolved further on this subject, due in part to Lerner’s influence, but he never answered the challenge posed by Mises and Hayek.

That is from my student Doug McKenzie, read more here.  Elsewhere on the Mises site you will find this proposal for a Misesian pocket calculator, and an on-line version of Robert LeFevre’s classic libertarian anarchist essay on government.

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