Ludwig von Mises book 'socialism' - what do you think?

[ev]

I just bought a new book today titled: 'Socialism AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS' by Ludwig von Mises. I have bought the book because of its critique on socialism. Apparently his main argument is that socialism must fail economically because of the economic calculation problem – the impossibility of a socialist government being able to make the economic calculations required to organize a complex economy.

I am going to start this book tommorow and i would like to know if anyone else has read this book and what they think of it.

[Kassad]

I was converted from the right-wing libertarian movement. Mises was one of the main influences of the people I talked to. Mises, in general shows a massive disregard for workers and the environment. In general, it leaves things like wages and healthcare to chance. Basically, it's all a matter of "we hope jobs are abundant", "we hope prices go down" and so on. If you're rich and have lots of money, you'll love him. If not, then you won't approve of much besides support for civil liberties.

[Robespierre2.0]

I don't get that 'economic calculation' argument.
People need food, clothes, shelter, healthcare, employment, and entertainment.
Meeting everyone's needs should be as simple as counting heads, right? Especially so with the technology we have today; we could easily cater to different food/clothes preferences if we electronically recorded what everyone wants.

Mises has lived in capitalism his whole life, and approaches all information with a bourgeois world-view- I'd be aware of that and look for instances when he lets his world-view conveniently shift the facts; everyone, no matter what ideology, tries to avoid cognitive dissonance.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Von Mises is a fucking joke.

Just look at the sort of trash that moron wrote: http://mises.org/humanaction/chap1sec2.asp

These are the same type of clowns that were cited in another recent thread who claim to stand for free speech while promoting racial oppression.

[Kassad]

Probably the most ridiculous argument Mises, Rothbard, Hayek and all the rest make is the ridiculous assertion that competition will raise wages. Tell that to those living on pennies a day across the world. Their views of the world are so skewed and disgusting sometimes that I'm astounded to see that I respected their ideologies for a while.

[Dimentio]

Probably the most ridiculous argument Mises, Rothbard, Hayek and all the rest make is the ridiculous assertion that competition will raise wages. Tell that to those living on pennies a day across the world. Their views of the world are so skewed and disgusting sometimes that I'm astounded to see that I respected their ideologies for a while.

Competition tend to raise wages, but the problem is not that the poor gets monetarily worse off, but comparatively. Namely that wealth and resources are more and more concentrated into a smaller and smaller group of very rich, monopolistic capitalists.

[Kassad]

That is true, but there are many times where there just aren't enough jobs to create that competition, such as right now. Honestly, all of these people present the argument that businesses will pay good wages out of the kindness of their hearts. They pollute our environment, abuse the system and cheat taxes. Why do we expect anything besides dirty action from them?

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Hayek actually had to correct Von Mises when Lange and the Soviets disproved his initial assumption that planning is impossible. Even still, the calculation debate is based around a straw man that assumes central planners will decide everything for the economy.

Von Mises is powerless against libertarian socialism; he admits it himself when the subject of anarcho-syndicalism was brought up. And you can actually spin this around on corporations, since they are in the same boat as central planners. Even laissez faire capitalism suffers from an inconstancy in the market system: it doesn't utilize calculation appropriately. Profit distorts numbers, as well as producers holding back information to the consumer. There's also underpricing, where you sell something at a cost below production just to defeat a competitor, auctions, and fractional-reserve banking - where money is just arbitrarily introduced into the system for loan purposes.

The entire Austrian school is built on the presumption that "property rights" exist. Literally. Even Chicago school advocates bring up that criticism via David Friedman.

[GPDP]

Von Mises is powerless against libertarian socialism; he admits it himself when the subject of anarcho-syndicalism was brought up.

Seriously? I'd like to see this admission, if you don't mind.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secI1.html#seci11


Ironically enough, von Mises did mention the idea of such a mutualist system in his initial essay. He wrote of a system in which "the 'coal [miners'] syndicate' provides the 'iron [workers'] syndicate'" with goods and argued that "no price can be formed, except when both syndicates are the owners of the means of production employed in their business" (which may come as a surprise to transnational companies whose different workplaces sell each other their products!) Such a system is dismissed: "This would not be socialisation but workers' capitalism and syndicalism." [Op. Cit., p. 112]
However, his logic is flawed. Firstly, as we noted, modern capitalism shows that workplaces owned by the same body (in this case, a large company) can exchange goods via the price form. That von Mises makes such a statement indicates well the firm basis of his argument in reality. Secondly, such a system may be, as von Mises states, "syndicalism" (at least a form of syndicalism, as most syndicalists were and still are in favour of libertarian communism, a simple fact apparently unknown to von Mises) but it is not capitalist as there is no wage labour involved as workers' own and control their own means of production. Indeed, von Mises ignorance of syndicalist thought is striking. In Human Action he asserts that the "market is a consumers' democracy. The syndicalists want to transform it into a producers' democracy." [p. 809] Most syndicalists, however, aim to abolish the market and all aim for workers' control of production to complement (not replace) consumer choice. Syndicalists, like other anarchists, do not aim for workers' control of consumption as von Mises asserts. Given that von Mises asserts that the market, in which one person can have a thousand votes and another one, is a "democracy" his ignorance of syndicalist ideas is perhaps only one aspect of a general ignorance of reality.