Abstract

Hayek is, with Mises, one the prominent Austrian economists who took part in the historical “socialist calculation debate” of the 1930s. After recalling precisely what Mises’s crucial argument against socialism was (socialism means the abolition of market prices which are necessary for real rational economic decisions to be taken in production), this paper goes on to show what Hayek’s main argument was (state planning of the economy is impossible because no super-brain can have all the necessary knowledge to be economically efficient). I will further show that, while this last argument is theoretical, Hayek has also an argument about the preeminence of competitive economy from an evolutionary standpoint, which is an empirical question and thus forms a less conclusive argument. In the second part of this paper, I will summarize how Myrdal explains in his 1960 book, and from a completely different angle, how state intervention and planning historically occurred—and continues to work—in our Western Capitalist Welfare States. Myrdal’s account is explicitly presented by him as having empirical import, but also strong normative content. Hayek, on the contrary, argues that the efficiency of state planning is a problem for economists to solve on exclusively scientific grounds. My purpose is to show important divergences between these two economic viewpoints and to sketch a philosophical appraisal of both.