Abstract
ABSTRACT The article investigates the relation between praxeology and history in the critique Mises directs at the possibility of the long-term existence of a socialist commonwealth. We argue that Mises makes no clear distinction between the praxeological concept of 'private property' (associated with the possession of means of production) and the historical concept of the ideal-type 'private property' (associated to property rights - see HODGSON, 2015). The lack of precision between the theoretical and the historical concepts of private property prevents Mises’s critique from being an 'exact law', as he would have it. Finally, we show in the last section the consequences for Mises’s critique of socialism of having a historical and a praxeological concept of private property.
Highlights
The article investigates the relation between praxeology and history in the critique Mises directs at the possibility of the long-term existence of a socialist commonwealth
In the Concluding Remarks and Future Research, we suggest that Mises’s case and our results can help illuminate the relationship between markets and socialism, once we understand that the concepts of private and communal property are logical, but historical
Tensions between theory and history in von mises’s critique of socialism catastrophe theory8 to account for the emergence of institutions caused by the interactions of purposeful individuals, he seems to face a dilemma: i) He can either use exclusively a priori pure categories of action (Mises exemplifies them as value, cost, price, wealth, exchange and means of exchange – none of which should refer to concrete economic phenomena9) to make exact deductions of economic phenomena
Summary
One caricatures the Methodenstreit as a bitter disagreement between the Austrian Carl Menger and the German Gustav von Schmoller in 1883-1884 regarding the proper method of investigation for the social sciences This 'battle of methods' had an English version, between the first marginalists (Jevons and Edgeworth) and economists of a more historical bent, like Cliffe Leslie and John Ingram. In 1932, reports Kurtz, both historicists and marginalists could agree that pure theory is important for the development of economic science Both could agree on adopting the theory of marginal utility, as a leading figure of the young historical school, Arthur Spiethoff
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