Originally published in Common Voice Issue 3 (2005).
The “economic calculation argument” (ECA) is principally linked with the Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, who wrote a seminal tract (“Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth”) in 1920, purporting to show that socialism was not a realisable system.
Inequality illustration from FightInequality.org based on photo from Kenya
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A very useful addition to the
A very useful addition to the libcom library. I assume D.R.Steele is the former Dave Steele, originally a member and writer for the spgb - a clever guy but someone it seems too easily distracted by the arguments against capitalism and for communism as abstract systems rather than the potential outcome of the material struggle of the working class to assert our humanity against the alienation of the rule of the commodity. (Edit: I preferred the more imaginative D.R.Steele of 1969 in his article 'Smash Cash' published in Oz magazine).
Robin Cox still writes some shorter pieces for the Socialist Standard as here most recently:
https://worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020/2020s/no-1390-june-2020/economics-the-marginalist-fallacy/
That is the very Steele,
That is the very Steele, Spiky. And here (rather ill-formatted) is the article from Oz you mention: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2004/2000s/no-1198-june-2004/smash-cash .