In 1920, Ludwig von Mises dropped a bombshell on the European economic world with his article "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth." In it Mises argued that socialism was impossible as an economic system — socialism simply can't calculate.
It set off two decades of debate. So by the time the essays appeared in English in 1935, here in Collectivist Economic Planning, the debate was still raging. This volume, edited by F.A. Hayek, dug the knife into socialism's heart unlike any book ever to appear. It contains essays by Mises along with a foreword and afterword by Hayek. It also contains more commentary by N.G. Pierson, George Halm, and Enrico Barone, as well as a new introduction.
It is exceptionally well edited and beautifully argued. And the contents are nothing short of prophetic. Mises knew that the socialist economies' days were numbered, and history has borne this out.
Meanwhile, the so-called "calculation argument" has still never been answered. It shows that without private property in capital goods, there can be no prices and hence no data available for cost accounting. Production becomes completely irrational, random at best.
Mises had convinced his generation of the futility of socialism, and this new edition of Collectivist Economic Planning completely devastates the whole socialist apparatus for yet another generation.
No one interested in this debate can afford not to be acquainted with Mises's argument put forward so powerfully in this book.
