"Economic Calculation In The Socialist Commonwealth" is an article by Austrian School economist and libertarian thinker Ludwig von Mises. Its critique against economic calculation in a planned economy triggered the decades-long economic calculation debate.[1][2]
The article was first published 1920 in German under the title "Die Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen".[3] It is based on a lecture Mises gave in 1919 as a response to a book by Otto Neurath arguing for the feasibility of central planning.[3] Mises argued that no prices for capital goods could be obtained in a socialist economy if the government owned the means of production, since all exchanges would merely be internal transfers rather than "objects of exchange", setting the price mechanism out of order.