Impossibilité du calcul économique en régime socialiste
Hayek: information
use of knowledge in society pretense of knowledge
Mises: calculation
https://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae7_2_5.pdf
According to Joseph Salerno, "Mises unswervingly identified the unique and insoluble problem of socialism as the impossibility of calculation-not, as in the case of F. A. Hayek, as an absence of an efficient mechanism for conveying knowledge to the planners" (Post- script 1990, p. 59, in a section entitled "Mises vs. the Hayekians"). The "Hayekian position criticizing the relative inefficiency of non- market mechanisms for discovery, communication, and use of knowl- edge in the allocation of productive resources" is "categorically differ- ent" from the Misesian critique (Ibid., p. 64). "For Hayek, the major problem for the socialist planning board is its lack of knowledge," says Murray Rothbard. Hayek's "argument for the free economy and against statism rests on an argument from ignorance." For Mises, however, the central problem is not *Leland B. Yeager is professor of economics at Auburn University. The author thanks Roger Koppl and Roger Garrison for helpful discussions. The Review of Austrian Economics Vo1.7, No. 2 (1994): 93-109 ISSN 0889-3047 he Review of Austrian Economics Vol. 7,No. 2 "knowledge." Even if the planners had perfect knowledge of consum- ers' value priorities, of resources, and of technologies, "they still would not be able to calculate, for lack of a price system of the means of production. The problem is not knowledge, then, but calculability." The "role of the appraising entrepreneur, driven by the quest for profits and the avoidance of losses, . . . cannot be fulfilled by the socialist planning board, for lack of a market in the means of produc- tion. Without such a market, there are no genuine money prices and therefore no means for the entrepreneur to calculate and appraise in cardinal monetary terms" (Rothbard 1991 in a section on "Fallacies of Hayek and Kirzner," pp. 65-68).
