Calculation and Conflict

Bibliographic Data

ID4436573
AuthorsJessica Whyte (0000-0001-9883-3518, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume119
Issue1
Pages31-51
Publication date2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSouth Atlantic Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-2876 • E-ISSN: 1527-8026
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00382876-8007641
OpenAlexW3004882019
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited19

Today, it is often forgotten that the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s was not only about whether market societies were more economically efficient than planned ones; more crucially, Ludwig von Mises and his disciple Friedrich Hayek depicted economic planning as a threat to the moral and political order of "Western civilization." A planned economy, these early neoliberals argued, would override the "democracy of consumers" through which individuals registered their own preferences on the market and threaten individual freedom and social peace. This article argues that early neoliberal thinkers mobilized a racialized argument against economic planning, which they depicted as a threat from "the East" and a regression to a "primitive" pre-capitalist, egalitarian morality. Against this neoliberal argument, I retrieve the Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath's argument that a capitalist market economy is inherently violent and requires the suppression of non-market forms of life

Argument (complex analysis) · Capitalism · Civilization · Democracy · Economic system · Economics · Market socialism · Morality · Neoliberalism (international relations) · Order (exchange) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Socialism · Sociology · Law · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Philosophy, Science, and History

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Open DOIOpen Access