김정은에게 급한 것은, '목숨'과 '돈'
日本은 '고립'은커녕, 북한 관련 이슈가 진전될수록 역할이 증대될 수밖에 없으므로 북한은 일본을 중시할 수밖에 없는 입장이다. 日本은 초조할 것이 없다.
펀드빌더(회원)
2018. 5. 6. 산케이 신문
북한이 왜 대화노선으로 갑자기 선회한 것인가? 이에 대해, 일본에서는 두 가지 견해가 있다. 하나는, 경제제재와 미국의 군사압력이 효과를 발휘했다는 견해다. 경제 위기와 목숨의 위기를 느낀 김정은이 궁여지책으로 선택한 결과라는 이야기다. 또 하나는, 경제제재는 한정적이거나 무의미했고 군사적으로도 '반격을 두려워하는 미국은 우리(북한)를 공격하지 못할 것'이라고 북한이 간파했다는 견해다. 다시 말해, 핵과 대륙간 탄도미사일을 완성한 것에 자신감을 가진 김정은 정권 스스로가 '적당한 때가 무르익었다'고 판단하고 나름대로의 스케줄에 따라 전략적 외교를 펼치고 있는 것이라는 이야기다.
어느 쪽이든, 분명한 것은 부친 김정일은 비록 70년까지 살았지만, 김정은은 여생을 보장받을 수 있는 입장이 아니라는 점이다. 새로운 경제모델을 도입하는 경우라도, 예를 들어, 중국식 개방 노선을 택했다고 쳐도, 그 이후에 경제가 제대로 발전하지 않으면 결국 절대권력 자리는 흔들리게 된다. 권좌에서 쫓겨나는 일까지 있을 수 있다. 결국, 김정은은 미국과 일본으로부터 각각 '목숨'과 '돈'에 관한 확실한 보장을 받기 위해, 대화국면으로 나올 수밖에 없었다고 볼 수 있다. (발췌)
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2018. 5. 6. 산케이 신문
북한이 왜 대화노선으로 갑자기 선회한 것인가? 이에 대해, 일본에서는 두 가지 견해가 있다. 하나는, 경제제재와 미국의 군사압력이 효과를 발휘했다는 견해다. 경제 위기와 목숨의 위기를 느낀 김정은이 궁여지책으로 선택한 결과라는 이야기다. 또 하나는, 경제제재는 한정적이거나 무의미했고 군사적으로도 '반격을 두려워하는 미국은 우리(북한)를 공격하지 못할 것'이라고 북한이 간파했다는 견해다. 다시 말해, 핵과 대륙간 탄도미사일을 완성한 것에 자신감을 가진 김정은 정권 스스로가 '적당한 때가 무르익었다'고 판단하고 나름대로의 스케줄에 따라 전략적 외교를 펼치고 있는 것이라는 이야기다.
어느 쪽이든, 분명한 것은 부친 김정일은 비록 70년까지 살았지만, 김정은은 여생을 보장받을 수 있는 입장이 아니라는 점이다. 새로운 경제모델을 도입하는 경우라도, 예를 들어, 중국식 개방 노선을 택했다고 쳐도, 그 이후에 경제가 제대로 발전하지 않으면 결국 절대권력 자리는 흔들리게 된다. 권좌에서 쫓겨나는 일까지 있을 수 있다. 결국, 김정은은 미국과 일본으로부터 각각 '목숨'과 '돈'에 관한 확실한 보장을 받기 위해, 대화국면으로 나올 수밖에 없었다고 볼 수 있다. (발췌)
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무역 전쟁에서 중국은 미국보다 잃는 게 더 많다. 더구나 중국의 경제는 보기와 달리 취약하다.
부채를 바탕으로 이룩한 경제 성장은 효율성을 감소시키고 있다. 또 중국의 노동력은 줄어들고 있고 노화하고 있어서, 지난 90년대 일본을 연상케 한다.
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한국에서도 한때 막스나 사회주의적 발언을 하는 사람은 정치를 할 수 없었다.
하지만 이제는 그와 반대로 되었다.
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근대는 폭력의 국가 독점에서 시작되었고, 국가의 독점적 재정 무책임으로 끝난다.
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| stargate 2018-05-06 오후 10:31 | ||
| 이명박 박근혜 정부의 실패는 좌파가 우리 사회에 얼마나 광범위하게 퍼져 있는가에 대한 인식의 안이함에 있었다고 생각합니다. 권력이 저 쪽으로 넘어가면 피바람이 불거라는 절박함이 느껴지지 않았습니다. 오히려 권력이 저쪽으로 갈 때를 대비해서 책 잡힐 일을 만들지 말아야 한다는 소극적 자세가 얼마나 말이 안되는 일이었나 하는 것을 이제야 깨닫게 되었을 것입니다. 소통 대화 청렴 같은 나약한 덕목을 내세우는 사람은 우리 나라에 맞지 않습니다. 이승만 박정희 같은 강력한 자유 민주주의 이념으로 무장된 사람이 필요합니다. (조갑제닷컴 댓글) --->민주당은 정상적인 정당이라기 보다는, 주사파들이 골간이 된 막가파 집단이다. 그런데 박 대통령이 그들을 정상적인 정당으로 여기면서 큰 오판을 하고 말았다. 좌파 혁명이 일어났는데도 이를 단순히 최순실의 일탈로 여기고, 재판을 받으면서 자신이 법률에 따라 공정한 재판을 받을 거라고 기대하는 등, 정치인으로서는 너무나 무능한 면모를 보였다. ----------------------------------------------------------------------   ----------------------------------------  -------------------------------------------- 지금까지 북괴-종북은 '봄(적화통일)이 왔네' 평화 쑈를 하면서 마치 이미 평화가 이뤄진 듯이 선전 선동을 해왔다. 북핵이 제거된 것도 없고 제거될 구체적 방식에 대한 협정도 없이 무조건적이고 일방적인 퍼주기 합의를 보면서 가왕은 개정은에게 90도 허리 굽혀 악수를 하고 철 없는 아이돌은 '만나뵈서 영광'이라는 소리를 하면서 개정은에 대한 이미지 세탁까지도 성공적으로 했다. 그리고 이제 미북회담이 다가오니 이제 슬슬 꽁무니를 빼면서 모든 책임을 미국에게 넘기려 분위기를 깔고 있다. 이제 여론들의 방향은 이렇게 흘러 갈 것이다. 1. 북괴에 대한 PVID식 핵폐기란 지나친 요구 2. 개정은의 평화를 위한 선언이 가장 큰 의미 3. 한민족 공동 번영을 위해 전쟁은 없어야 4. 자주적 통일을 위해 외세 개입을 막아야 5. 미국의 지나친 요구가 평화협정의 걸림돌 위와 같은 요지의 북괴 로동신문에서너 봄직한 선전선동식 기사들이 한국 주요 언론사에서 쏟아져 나올 것이다. 미북회담 결렬시 모든 책임은 미국에 있다는 말도 안되는 그런 멍청한 내용들이 이 나라 국민 80%를 장악할 때에 마지막 피날레 [반전] [평화] [반미] [미군철수] 이런 페켓을 든 광우뻥과 떼월호 좆불시위를 합친 것 보다 더 큰 규모의 시위대가 이 대한민국의 숨통을 사망 직전까지 죄여올 것이다. 트럼프만 믿고 우린 아무 것도 할 필요 없는 것이 아니다. 축구에서 공을 가진 선수만 뛰는 것이 아니라 공을 패스 받을 선수도 패스 받기 좋은 곳으로 같이 뛰어야 공을 가진 선수의 선택권의 폭이 넓어지듯 대한민국 안에 반공자유진영도 트럼프에 발 맞춰 뛰어야 한다. [출처] 미북 회담을 앞두고 진정한 북괴-종북의 움직임이 시작되었다
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성남시가 아니라 복마전
---------------------------------------------------뱅모 트윗 [충성한답시고 속내까는 바보] 현직 검사가 문재인 헌법 난동 해프닝의 속내를 깠다. "한반도를 13개 지역으로 나눈 연방제 통일이 바람직" ㅋㅋ 문재인 헌법은 '지방분권'이란 이름으로 대한민국 중앙정부를 해체하려는 시도였다. 야당 지방선거 출마자들도 '표심'잡는답시고 '분권, 분권' 하면서 깨춤을 췄고...  --------------------------------------- 한낮에 국회의원을 테러를 자행하고도 눈도 꿈쩍안하는 이정권의 뻔뻔하고 파렴치한 행위를 봐라 에쿠스 타고다니는 박대통령을 뇌물수수로 감옥에 넣으면서 문재앙은 세계에 몇대없는 메르세데스-마이바흐 S600 10억 가량되는 차 타고 다닌다. 국민들은 다죽어도 바람난 남편처럼 지 가정 다 팽개쳐 버리고 북한에 정신나간넘 아니냐 청년들은 도서관 감옥에 가둬 평생 실업의 고통으로 두려워하고 자영업자 곡소리도 경제불황으로 직장에서 쫓겨나는 노동자 고통은 개나 줘버렸다. 국민의 고통의 울음과 곡소리를 조작하고 덮어버리고 묻어버리고 협박하고 자기 멋대로 가지고 노는 독재자의 모습과 뭐가 다른가 문재앙의 친위대는 아직도 댓글로 매크로로 거짓의 붉은글로 세상을 덮고있으니 그맑고 맑던 하늘도 바다도 붉게 물들고 대한민국의 현실은 뿌옇게 바로 앞도 안보일지경에 이르렀다. 자연은 우리에게 이나라의 모습을 보여주는데 눈먼자들의 도시에 살고있는 우리들만 그것을 모른다. 용기는 전염된다. 이시대는 화려하고 달콤한 미사여구가 아니라 진정 용기가 필요한 시대다. [출처] 문재앙 정권의 민낯 ------------------------------------------------
뭉가 눈치 보고 헛소리하는 찌라시라면 볼 거 없고 '미북회담'이라는게 있다면 그냥 조선일보 예상대로 6월 8~9일 G7정상회담 이후 싱가포르로 확정이다.그런데 난데없이 과거 미국과 단계적 핵 폐기에 합의한 이란이 몰래 핵무기를 만들고 있었다는게 들통나면서 미국은 이란 핵협정 탈퇴가 기정사실이다.
게다가 미국은 거짓말의 이란과 북괴와의 연관성까지 찾고 있음과 동시에 먼저 북괴가 입 벌리게 만들었다. 따라서 미국은 미북회담이라는게 열리더라도 트럼프가 가지 않게 하고 차관급 이하가 참석해 입장차 확인한 다음 제재와 압박 기조로 돌아올 것으로 봄. [출처] 미북 회담 사실상 결렬 밑그림 그려지네
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진정한 사회주의는 이미 실행되었다. 하지만 그것은 재앙이었다.
막스의 부활은 진정한 사회주의가 한 번도 실행되지 못했다는 생각에 기초한다. 이렇게 믿는 사람들은 막시즘이 부르주아 사상의 존재로 오염되었거나, 잔존하는 자본주의 관습에 의해 왜곡되었다고 주장한다.
순수한 자본주의는 어디에서도 존재한 적이 없지만, 자본주의자들은 “진정한 자본주의는 한 번도 실행되지 않았다.”고 변명하지 않는다.
"Real Socialism" Has Indeed Been Tried — And It's Been a Disaster
Ryan McMaken
May 5th marks the 200th Anniversary of Karl Marx's birth, and in spite of inspiring a wide variety of political movements that have caused countless human rights disasters, Marx continues to be an object of admiration among many intellectuals and artists. One such example can be seen in Raoul Peck's new film The Young Karl Marx which portrays Marx is a principled radical with a laudable thirst for justice.
Fortunately for Marx the man and his reputation, he never personally gained control of the machinery of any state. Thus, the dirty work of actually implementing the necessary "dictatorship of the proletariat" was left up to others. And those who attempted to bring Marxism into the light of practical reality, quickly found that applied Marxism brings impoverishment and the destruction of human freedom.
Nevertheless, after a century marked by brutal socialist regimes based on various interpretations of Marx's ideas, Marx's rehabilitation often rests on the idea that "real socialism" has "never been tried." That is, a truly "pure" socialist experience — as Marx presumably wanted — has always been tainted by the presence of bourgeois ideas or lingering capitalistic habits present in the state apparatus.
A typical example of this sort of thinking can be found in Noam Chomsky's insistence that the obviously socialist regime in Venezuela is really "quite remote from socialism." And it's also notable in philosopher Slavoj Zizek's 2017 article " The problem with Venezuela’s revolution is that it didn’t go far enough" at The Guardian.
In Zizek's view, it seems, socialism can work if the habits and customs of the status quo are destroyed utterly and replaced by entirely new ways of thinking. Or, as Zizek's describes it, old proverbs (i.e., modes of thought) must be totally replaced by new proverbs. For example:
Radical revolutionaries like Robespierre fail because they just enact a break with the past without succeeding in their effort to enforce a new set of customs (recall the utmost failure of Robespierre’s idea to replace religion with the new cult of a Supreme Being). The leaders like Lenin and Mao succeeded (for some time, at least) because they invented new proverbs, which means that they imposed new customs that regulated daily lives.
Thus, the problem in Venezuela is not that countless private business have been seized, property rights been destroyed, and countless citizens deprived of basic freedoms. No, the problem is that the Venezuelan regime was too conservative and failed to implement a total break with the past.
But how is that break from the past to be brought about? The truth lies in the language used by Zizek himself. It involves "enforc[ing] a set of customs" and "impos[ing] new customs." This, of course, is the language of coercion and violence. These new "customs" wouldn't have to be imposed, of course, if people wanted to adopt them voluntarily.
From the point of view of the socialist purist, if only a new Lenin or a new Mao were to come along and try harder, well, then socialism might finally succeed. After all, as the satirical publication The Onion recently suggested, "Stalin Was Just One Great Purge Away From Creating Communist Utopia."
As hyperbolic as such a statement may seem, this idea nevertheless fundamentally describes the mindset of those who claim "socialism has never really been tried"; if socialism is to be implemented, something must be done to relieve people of their attachment to private property and all the other customs and ideas that get in the way of utopia.
In practice, this has always meant using the power of the state to force a new way of life on people. Moreover, thanks to economic realities, it has also meant that the more socialism is applied, the lower the standard of living sinks. But — the thinking goes — so long as the socialist planners keep forging ahead, and refuse to be sabotaged by capitalist thought, then utopia can be reached. Yes, there will be a lot of suffering in the interim, but the ultimate payoff will be incalculably great.
Both Marx and Stalin admitted this unfortunate "interim stage" was a problem. As Ludwig von Mises notes, Marx even had to invent a two-tiered evolution of socialism:
In a letter, Karl Marx distinguished between two stages of socialism — the lower preliminary stage and the higher stage. But Marx didn’t give different names to these two stages. At the higher stage, he said, there will be such an abundance of everything that it will be possible to establish the principle “to everybody according to his needs.” Because foreign critics noticed differences in the standards of living of various members of the Russian Soviets, Stalin made a distinction. At the end of the 1920s he declared that the lower stage was “socialism” and the higher stage was “communism.” The difference was that at the lower socialist stage there was inequality in the rations of the various members of the Russian Soviets; equality will be attained only in the later, communist, stage.
Partial Capitalism Works Better Than Partial Socialism
Note, however, that capitalism doesn't suffer from this problem. If we take a middle-of-the road interventionist economy and start introducing partial, half-way free-market liberal reforms, does this cause the economy to collapse?
Certainly not. Indeed, everywhere we look and find a relatively less socialistic economy, the less poverty and more prosperity we find.
Historically, this is obvious. The countries that embraced free trade, industrialization, and the trappings of market economies early on are the wealthiest economies today. We also find this to be the case in post-war Europe where the relatively pro-market economies such as those in Germany and the UK are wealthier and have higher standards of living than the more socialistic economies of southern Europe — such as Greece and Spain. This is even true of the Scandinavian countries like Sweden, which, as Per Bylund has noted, historically built its wealth with a relatively laissez-faire regime.
We see this phenomenon at work in comparisons between West Germany and East Germany. In West Germany after World War II pro-market reforms helped usher in a period of immense economic growth — with only half-way reforms. By abolishing price controls and other government-imposed restraints on the economy, the Germany economy took off while more socialistic economies — like that found in the UK at the time — were more stagnant.
Obviously, in the case of Germany, the West German state did not adopt "pure" capitalism. They merely adopted relatively more laissez-faire. And the economy expanded. In fact, according to Hans Sennholz, the West German state rather accidentally stumbled upon its free market reforms. And yet, we call the results "the German economic miracle."
Other examples can be found across Eastern Europe and Latin America. Where markets are more relatively free, the higher the standard of living, and the greater the economic growth. Capitalists aren't forced to make excuses about how "real capitalism has never been tried" — even though purely free markets have never existed anywhere.
200 years after Marx, though, every new Marx-inspired failure causes his defenders to resort to this same excuse again and again. One can only hope that 200 years from now, they've given up.
Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is the editor of Mises Wire and The Austrian
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오스트리아 학파의 막시즘 비판
시장이 없으면 가격 시스템이 없고, 가격 시스템이 없으면 경제적 계산도 없다.
사회주의에서는 수익이나 손실을 분별할 수 없고, 성공과 실패도 인식할 수가 없다. 사회주의 관리는 눈을 가린 채 삶을 강요받은 사람과 같다.
The Austrian School's Critique of Marxism
•Eugen-Maria Schulak•Herbert Unterköfler
Council republics were established in Hungary and Bavaria according to the Russian Soviet model shortly after World War I. Violent revolts erupted in many places in Germany. Vienna, too, was dominated by this revolutionary atmosphere, which middle-class circles embraced with calculated opportunism. Ludwig von Mises, who at that time was a civil servant in the chamber of commerce of Lower Austria, recalled the following:
People were so convinced of the inevitability of Bolshevism that their main concern was securing a favorable place for themselves in the new order. … Bank directors and industrialists hoped to make good livings as managers under the Bolshevists. (Mises 1978/2009, pp. 14–15)
Otto Bauer was state secretary in the foreign department at this time, the leading Austro-Marxist, and later chairman of the nationalization commission. Mises knew him very well; they had attended Böhm-Bawerk's economics seminar together. "At the time," Mises wrote of the winter of 1918–1919 in his Memoirs,
I was successful in convincing the Bauers that the collapse of a Bolshevist experiment in Austria would be inevitable in a very short time, perhaps within days. … I knew what was at stake. Bolshevism would lead Vienna to starvation and terror within a few days. Plundering hordes would take to the streets and a second blood bath would destroy what was left of Viennese culture. After discussing these problems with the Bauers over the course of many evenings, I was finally able to persuade them of my view. (Ibid.)
In January of 1919, Bauer finally made the announcement in the 1Arbeiter-Zeitung that he wanted to carry out expropriations, with reimbursements in heavy industry and large-scale land holding. Organizational measures were to be taken in preparation for "nationalization" in other industries as well (cf. Bauer 1919).
The convincing Mises did in those memorable nighttime discussions was directed toward socialist political intentions that had the potential of endangering the short and unstable store of supplies available to the Viennese population even further. Of all the voluminous literature circulated during the subsequent debate on socialization — Schumpeter noted that even the most able were writing the most banal things (cf. Schumpeter 1922–1923, p. 307) — Mises was one of the few who kept his focus on the possible consequences of state intervention with sobriety and a sense of reality. The government-run "war and transitional economy" had provided numerous examples of the inevitable failure of central economic planning, and had also proven the "lesser economic productivity" of public enterprises (Mises 1919/1983/2000, pp. 220–221). Moreover, Mises realized early on that the interests of the Viennese Sozialisierungskommission ("Commission for Nationalization") were by no means identical to the interests of the federal states (Mises 1920b).
In any case, these nightly talks put such a strain on his relationship with Bauer that Mises tended to believe Bauer had tried to have him removed from the teaching staff at the University of Vienna (cf. Mises 1978/2009, p. 15). Mises was indeed no longer considered for the position of tenured professor in Vienna when it became vacant in 1919. It was given instead to Othmar Spann (1878–1950), a former colleague of Bauer in the Wissenschaftliche Komitee für Kriegswirtschaft ("Academic Committee for War Economy") in the royal-imperial Ministry of War.
During the course of the nationalization debate of 1919, Mises defended private property and the market economy with the argument of economic efficiency of supply. But he had to argue the position almost single-handedly, as many members of the Austrian School had been appointed to senior positions in the central "war and transition economy" offices, thereby joining the statist camp. It almost seemed as if they had — over the course of their careers — completely forgotten that the academic dispute with Marxism had at no university been so profound and productive as it had been in Vienna.
When the subjective theory of value had begun to take hold in the 1880s, other theories that competed with those of the Austrian School had also come to the fore, for example the labor theory of value. In Capital and Interest: A Critical History of Economical Theory (1884), Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk devoted a complete section to socialist notions ("The Exploitation Theory") and subjected them to fastidious and detailed criticism. In 1885, Gustav Gross authored one of the first biographical sketches on Karl Marx. In the very same year he produced a separate biography: Karl Marx: Eine Studie ("Karl Marx: A Study"). Shortly thereafter he reviewed the second volume of Das Kapital (Capital). Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen's first scholarly publication was Die Lehre von den Produktionsfaktoren in den sozialistischen Theorien (1885) ("Study of the Factors of Production in Socialist Theories").
The dispute with the socialists was soon to become a permanent fixture of the Austrian School. It is an irony of history that it was this school of thought that first introduced academic discourse about socialism into the seminar rooms and libraries of established economics departments. Criticism was aimed primarily at the labor theory of value, whose contradictions and shortcomings were thought to have been overcome once and for all with the subjective theory of value. The socialist theory did not represent progress, but rather regression (cf. Zuckerkandl 1889, p. 296). Fierce controversy between Böhm-Bawerk (1890 and 1892a), Dietzel (1890 and 1891), and even Zuckerkandl (1890), among others, brought competition between the two doctrines to a head. Dietzel held to the labor theory of value, and held fast to the view that the principle of marginal utility was, in the end, nothing more than the good old law of supply and demand (Dietzel 1890, p. 570).
Disputes with socialism soon went beyond the labor theory of value and brought the "socialist state" into question in many respects. Böhm-Bawerk, for example, regarded interest as an economic category wholly independent of the social system; interest would exist even in the "socialist state" (Böhm-Bawerk 1891/1930, pp. 365–71). Wieser criticized socialist writers for their inadequate teaching of value's role in the socialist state. He came to the conclusion that "not for one day could the [socialist] economic state of the future be administered according to any such reading of value." For Wieser, "in the socialist theory of value pretty nearly everything is wrong" (cf. Wieser 1889/1893, pp. 64–66). Johann von Komorzynski extended the analysis to political science: he distinguished between a "true," "philanthropic socialism," and a "delusory socialism" aimed purely at class interests (Komorzynski 1893).
After the posthumous editing of the third volume of Das Kapital (1895), two in-depth contributions of the Austrian School marked the temporary cessation of its critique of Marxism. In one perceptive essay, Komorzynski tried to prove that Marxist theories were "at the greatest possible odds with the real economic processes." The contradiction stemmed "from the basic principle, not from the utopian thinking" (Komorzynski 1897, p. 243). In his famous Zum Abschluß des Marxschen Systems (1896) (Karl Marx and the Close of His System, 1949), Böhm-Bawerk summarized his previous critique and came to the conclusion — based on the well-known contradictions between the first two and the third volumes of Das Kapital — that the final Marxist theory "contains as many cardinal errors as there are points in the arguments." They "bear evident traces of having been a subtle and artificial afterthought contrived to make a preconceived opinion seem the natural outcome of a prolonged investigation" (Böhm-Bawerk 1896/1949, p. 69). "The Marxian system," according to Böhm-Bawerk,
has a past and a present, but no abiding future. … A clever dialectic may make a temporary impression on the human mind, but cannot make a lasting one. In the long run, facts and the secure linking causes and effects win the day.
Böhm-Bawerk foresaw, that the "belief in an authority, which has been rooted for thirty years" in Marxist apologetics "forms a bulwark against the incursion of critical knowledge" that "will slowly but surely be broken down." And even then, "Socialism will certainly not be overthrown with the Marxian system — neither practical nor theoretical socialism" (ibid., p. 117).
By the end of the 1880s, the law faculty of the University of Vienna became a center of research into socialism. In his sensational work Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag in geschichtlicher Darstellung (1886) ("A Historical View of The Right to Full Labor Revenue"), Anton Menger (1841–1906), one of Carl Menger's brothers, professor of civil litigation law and the first socialist of the monarchy with a tenured professorship, made a case for the nationalization of the means of production. Carl Grünberg (1861–1940), a "scientific Marxist," taught economics there starting in 1892, and was one among many of Mises's teachers. In 1924 he was appointed to Frankfurt where he founded the Institut für Sozialforschung ("Institute for Social Research") and edited the works of Marx.
Anton Menger, Carl Grünberg, and later even Böhm-Bawerk came to attract the young socialist elite: Max and Friedrich Adler, Otto Bauer, Karl Renner, Julius Tandler, Emil Lederer, Robert Danneberg, Julius Deutsch, and Rudolf Hilferding. From Hilferding's pen came the first Marxist anticritique directed at Böhm-Bawerk (cf. Rosner 1994). And his Das Finanzkapital (1910) (Finance Capital, 1981) was a remarkable outcome of the culture of the seminar. In it he comments on the role of banks and their symbiosis with the state, seemingly anticipating the monetary and business-cycle theory of the Austrian School, which was skeptical of both (cf. Streissler 2000b). On the eve of World War I, the continuing exchange of ideas between these talented young people nurtured in Böhm-Bawerk the belief that the labor theory of value had "lost ground in theoretical circles in all countries … in recent times" (Böhm-Bawerk 1890/1959, p. 249n.21).
Theoretical arguments that had evolved over the years did not play much of a role in the postwar debate on nationalization at first. In fact, ideas about the organization of the economy and economic policy were prevalent. But it soon appeared that the ideas of nationalization functionaries had been openly inadequate. Many nationalized business establishments fell upon economic hard times (cf. Weissel 1976, pp. 299–320). Entrepreneurs proved reluctant to invest when expropriations were announced, and amazingly enough, Otto Bauer seemed surprised at this reaction (cf. Bauer 1923, pp. 163, 173). In the federal states, state claims made the process of nationalization stall or fail altogether. But most notable was the threat of starvation in Vienna: in 1919, 150,000 of 186,000 school children were undernourished or severely undernourished. This was an indirect consequence of a controlled war economy that had led to a quadrupling of fallow land (cf. Bauer 1923, pp. 118–119). Schumpeter, who in 1919 had to resign as finance minister over the question of nationalization, took stock two years later:
Though it has political appeal, nationalization accompanied by a comfortable lifestyle and a simultaneously abundant provision of goods — and the childish ideal of bedding oneself in existing affluence — is just nonsense. Nationalization which is not nonsense is politically possible today, but only so long as no one attempts it in earnest. (Schumpeter 1922–1923, p. 308)
Just when the politics of nationalization were beginning to lose momentum, Mises gained recognition for his spectacular essay, Die Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen (1920a) (Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, 1935). It was expanded substantially two years later and published as the book, Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen über den Sozialismus (1922) (Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, 1936). Mises made the point that "rational" economic management, i.e., resource-conserving production and distribution of goods, which takes consumer preferences into account, can only be guaranteed with a free price system — the free exchange of goods and freedom to implement all possible uses of the goods — and that with central planning these goals can never be achieved. If the means of production are not privately owned, then efficient business leadership and the consequent satisfying of consumer interests cannot be ensured.
The core problem, according to Mises, is that
in the socialistic community economic calculation would be impossible. In any large undertaking the individual works or departments are partly independent in their accounts. They can reckon the cost of materials and labour, and it is possible at any time … to sum up the results of [their] activit[ies] in figures. In this way it is possible to ascertain with what success each separate branch has been operated and thereby to make decisions concerning the reorganization, limitations or extension of existing branches or the establishment of new ones. … It seems natural then to ask why … a socialistic community should not make separate accounts in the same manner. But this is impossible. Separate accounts for a single branch of one and the same undertaking are possible only when prices for all kinds of goods and services are established in the market and furnish a basis of reckoning. Where there is no market there is no price system, and where there is no price system there can be no economic calculation. (Mises 1922/1936/1951, p. 131)
Socialism, therefore, is not able to calculate. This is the main assertion of Mises's argument, otherwise known as the "calculation problem." There would be "neither discernible profits nor discernible losses … ; success and failure remain unrecognized in the dark. … A socialist management would be like a man forced to spend his life blindfolded" (Mises 1944/1983, p. 31).
Mises did not allow for the argument made by many "bourgeois" economists: that socialism could not be realized because humans were still too underdeveloped in a moral sense. According to Mises, socialism would be bound to fail, not because of morality, "but because the problems, that a socialist order would have to solve, present insuperable intellectual difficulties. The impracticability of Socialism is the result of intellectual, not moral, incapacity" (Mises 1922/1936/1951, p. 451).
Mises's brilliant and overpoweringly logical analysis was not new. Its main features were already part of an inventory belonging to the early marginal-utility theoreticians — but this was little acknowledged. Hermann Heinrich Gossen (1810–1858) had already established that only in a society based on private property could the economy be "adequately" and "most expediently managed": "The central agency assigned by the communists to allocate various jobs," Gossen said, would "learn very soon it had set itself a task whose solution was beyond the ability of human individuals" (Gossen 1854/1987, p. 231).
In terms of the earlier Austrian School, Friedrich von Wieser had already placed clear emphasis on the necessity of economic calculation (cf. Wieser 1884, pp. 166–67, 178). He was one of the first economists to recognize the relevance of the informational nature of "value" in an economy: "Value," Wieser stated, "is the form in which utility is calculated" (Wieser 1889/1893, p. 34), and "thus value comes to be the controlling power in economic life" (ibid., p. 36).
Apart from a few sporadic contributions in the foreign literature (cf. Schneider 1992, p. 112), the problem of economic calculation in socialism was scarcely considered until 1919 — not even by socialist economists. Erwin Weissel (1930–2005), the Viennese economist and historiographer of the Austro-Marxist debate on socialization, even claimed that "one wanted to ignore the problem" (Weissel 1976, p. 235). At the height of the socialization debate in spring 1919, Menger student and business attorney Markus Ettinger warned that "only market price … [could be] a reliable regulator of demand" and for the "in- and outflow of capital and labor from one area of production to another" (Ettinger 1919, p. 10).
It is interesting that Max Weber (1864–1920), who was in close contact with Mises during his stay in Vienna in 1919, also characterized "money calculation" in a book manuscript, unpublished at the time of his death, as a "specific device of the purposive-rational procurement economy" (Weber 1921/1972, p. 45).
Mises's fundamental critique received international recognition into the 1920s. The notion that central planning without a price system would automatically be inefficient was seldom denied. But in the early 1930s, economists in the English-speaking world began responding with models for a socialist calculation — in answer to Mises — that included the idea of "competition socialism." It prevailed and survived in socialist circles until the 1980s (cf. Socher 1986, pp. 180–94). The idea was that planners could adequately simulate market development with "trial-and-error loops" in between individual planning periods; subsequent calculations could then be made.
Both Mises and Hayek responded in detail and Hayek presented a concise summary of the complete debate in 1935 (Hayek 1935). He first and foremost centered on the hubristic notion of being able to plan economic and social systems comprehensively: socialism in all its right- and left-wing varieties was "an ideology born out of the desire to achieve complete control over the social order, and the belief that it is in our power to determine deliberately in any manner we like, every aspect of this social order" (Hayek 1973/1976/1979, vol. 2, p. 53). In contrast to Mises, Hayek emphasized the indispensable information function of market-induced prices: "that a market system has a greater knowledge of facts than any single individual or even any organization is the decisive reason why the market economy out performs any other economic system" (Hayek 1969a, p. 11). Amid heated debate, the Austrians were hardly aware of the fact that Hayek and Mises were pursuing two ultimately different paradigms (cf. Salerno 1993, pp. 116–117).
Mises's massive attack on the utopia of an economically efficient socialism did not evoke much in the way of a direct counterreaction (cf. Mises 1923). Because the instigators of nationalization were aiming only at partial socialization, they were able to "get out of a tight spot" (Weissel 1976, p. 234) by pointing to organizational issues. The counter attack came only after two years, when Helene Bauer (1871–1942) diagnosed the "bankruptcy of the marginal theory of value" in the party organ of the Socialist Party (Bankerott der Grenzwerttheorie, 1924). Using revolutionary rhetoric and warlike language, she insinuated that the marginal-utility theory served a frightened bourgeoisie as a bulwark, and was used as the predominant theory to agitate against Marxism at the university level (Bauer 1924, pp. 106–107). But Bauer touched the Achilles's heel of the marginal-utility theories on one point: she called their imputation theory inadequate (ibid., p. 112). The denunciatory intention of depicting the marginal-utility theory as an ideology of the "bourgeois" owner class was particularly obvious in Russian theoretical economist and philosopher Nicolai Ivanovich Bukharin's (1888–1938) Economic Theory of the Leisure Class (1919/1927). Bukharin's personal attacks on Böhm-Bawerk occasioned an unemotional counter criticism (Köppel 1930).
Ludwig von Mises was an especially easy target for this kind of appraisal on the part of socialist authors. Mises held the conviction that liberalism was the only idea that could effectively oppose socialism (cf. Mises 1927/1962/1985, p. 50). Liberalism, said Mises, is "applied economics" (ibid., p. 195); in another work from the previous year he had even stated that "classical liberalism was victorious with economics and through it" (Mises 1926, p. 269; and Mises 1929/1977, p. 22).
The theory of marginal utility nevertheless found some support in Germany in the 1920s — even from socialist writers or others with socialist leanings (cf. Kurz 1994, p. 56). While preparing for the Dresden convention of the Verein für Socialpolitik in 1932, Mises repeated his junction of modern economics and liberalism (cf. Mises 1931, p. 283) and was promptly criticized, even by advocates of the subjective theory of value (Weiss 1933/1993, pp. 51–52). Despite the polarization, a young participant of the Dresden convention, the postdoctoral graduate, attorney, and political scientist Hans Zeisl (1905–1992; in the United States he named himself Hans Zeisel) — sports correspondent of the socialist Arbeiter-Zeitung and until 1938 contributor to the now classical Marienthal-Studie2 — attempted the first synthesis in Marxismus und subjektive Theorie (1931) ("Marxism and the Subjective Theory of Value").
According to Zeisl, the notion of value had developed into a concept of "human elective action." The "goods concept" had "given way" to the "relational concept of possible uses" (Zeisl 1931/1993, pp. 180–81). The so-called laws of the subjective theory of value were of a "statistical nature" and received their cognitive value "when they are applied to empirically discerned demand systems" (ibid., p. 191). If one were to replace demand systems with "demand with purchasing power," one would immediately recognize that demand is allocated "according to class." The "crucial Marxist line of thought — that the level of wages and interest rates, etc., are dependent on 'class structure' — could be precisely articulated in the subjectivist theory of value" (ibid., pp. 192–193).
Subsequent changes in the political arena rendered any continued development of this interesting synthesis of praxeological thinking and the Marxist theory of distribution impossible.
This article is excerpted from chapter 14 of The Austrian School of Economics: A History of Its Ideas, Ambassadors, and Institutions (2011).
1. The "'Workers' Newspaper" was started in 1889 and functioned as the main organ of the Austrian Socialist Party until 1989; it was bannend from 1934–1945; it ceased publication as an independet newspaper in 1991.
2. Edited and authored by Marie Jahoda, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Hans Zeisel. Translated into English as Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community (London: Tavistock Publishing, 1971).
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