Two Sides of a Platonic Coin: Marxism and Neoclassicism in the Socialist Calculation Debate

Abstract

The socialist calculation debate occurred simultaneously with the development of increasingly idealized neoclassical market models in the early decades of the 20th century. Nonetheless, free market neoclassical economists were conspicuously absent from that debate, leaving the pro-market case to be made by Austrian economists. This paper puts forward an interpretation of the neoclassical school's relative absence based on certain shared philosophical premises of neoclassical market models and Marxism. It argues that the two schools' shared Platonic influences render the more devout exponents of static, perfectly competitive market models unable to contribute substantively to the defense of markets against advocates of socialism.