Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 09:30:49 +0100
From: Lew <Lew-AT-dialogues.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Otto Neurath-(post 1)


In article <19970806.202205.9534.0.farmelantj-AT-juno.com>, James Farmelant
<farmelantj-AT-juno.com> writes

>I found on-line a couple of pieces by Cosma Rahilla Shalizi on Otto
>Neurath, an Austrian economist, sociologist, philosopher and
>revolutionary who IMO is an unjustly neglected figure in the
>history of Marxism.  Neurath was a founder of the Vienna
>Circle, was a leading authority on economic planning and
>was an early participant in the 'socialist calculation' debate
>in which defended the viability of planned economies against
>the arguments of Weber, von Mises, and Hayek who argued
>that only market economies could operate rationally.

In Ludwig von Mises' classic anti-Marxist work, "Economic Calculation in
the Socialist Commonwealth" (1920), he argued that without some unit of
"value" there would be no longer any rational means of making decisions
regarding the production of goods. Marxian socialism, concluded Mises,
was impossible or would lead to catastrophe if attempted. This analysis
was based on a mystification of the market and its invisible hand, but
it did have a powerful impact on all shades of Marxist thought, and its
repercussions are still being felt. At the time, this lead to a variety
of responses. Some rejected value-less socialism altogether (Kautsky,
"Die proletarische Revolution und ihr Programm", 1922), while others
proposed using labour time as a common unit of account in socialism
(Pannekoek, "Workers Councils", 1970).

Another approach was that of Otto Neurath ("Wirtschaftsplan und
Naturalrechnung", 1925). Neurath pointed out that in socialism, in which
use values would be produced from other use values, there would be no
need for a universal unit of account but could calculate exclusively in
kind (eg. tonnes, kilos, litres). Calculation in kind is an essential
aspect of the production of goods in any society, including capitalism.
Freed from the tyranny of value, a socialist society can begin to
produce directly and solely for human need. The disappearance of
economic or value calculation in socialism would by no means involve the
disappearance of all rational calculation, since the calculation in kind
connected with producing specific quantities of goods as physical use
values would continue.
-- 
Lew


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