Rivalry and Central Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Reconsidered

Abstract

This study represents a serious challenge to conventional thinking in contemporary comparative systems, and the economics of socialism. It disputes the commonly accepted view of both the nature of the 'socialist calculation debate' of the 1930s and the lessons to be derived from it. Whereas many socialist and capitalist participants to the debate tended to talk in polar terms of central planning versus the market, the chief result of the whole controversy has been that the Neoclassical 'market-socialist' position is usually taken to represent a successful synthesis of planning with markets, a synthesis which almost completely dominates contemporary work in comparative economic systems. The author argues in fact that the famous debate has been largely misunderstood. His revisionist interpretation argues that it can no longer be viewed as a dated battle between extreme positions that have now become comfortably reconciled. Rather, the lesson is that planning and markets are fundamentally alternative co-ordination mechanisms and that the attempt to combine them tends to subvert the operation of each.