Feel Free Read Rivalry and Central Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Reconsidered PDF
Rivalry and Central Planning, first published in 1985, is a vital contribution to the scholarly literature in contemporary comparative systems, the economics of socialism, and the Austrian school of economics. 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 Austrian participants in the debate tended to talk in polar terms of central planning versus the market, the chief result of the controversy has been that the neoclassical “market-socialist” position is usually taken to represent a successful synthesis of planning and markets. Don Lavoie, however, argues that the famous debate has been largely misunderstood.The debate can no longer be viewed as a dated battle between extreme positions that have now become comfortably reconciled, as Lavoie insists that market socialists did not answer the Austrian school’s chief concerns about the challenges associated with rationally allocating resources. Rather, the lesson is that planning and markets are fundamentally alternative coordination mechanisms and that the attempt to combine them tends to subvert the operation of each.Praise for the Book“When it was first published in 1985, Don Lavoie’s revisionist account of the socialist calculation debate immediately became a seminal document in the Austrian revival. The book not only demonstrates the flaws of central planning but also shows why somany economists, in thrall to equilibrium theorizing, missed the essential points of the Austrian critique. The Mercatus Center’s reissuing of this important book is very welcome indeed.”—Bruce Caldwell, Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University“Rivalry and Central Planning was an important book when it was first published in 1985, and 30 years later it is still well worth scholarly attention. As the first detailed examination of the economic calculation debate from an Austrian perspective, Lavoie not only demonstrated the shortcomings of the socialist position but also provided a critique of much of mainstream economic theory. His emphasis onthe central importance of rivalry among competitors captured the central feature of a market economy that leads to innovation and economic growth. It is a classic, and I am delighted that this book will now once again be in print for a new generation of economists.”—Karen Vaughn, author of Austrian Economics in America: The Migration of a Tradition
