Does Mises argument mean libertarian communism is impossible?
No. While the “calculation argument” is often used by right-libertarian’s as the “scientific” basis for the argument that communism (a moneyless society) is impossible, it is based on certain false ideas of what money does and how an anarchist society would function without it. This is hardly surprising, as Mises based his theory on the “subjective” theory of value and marxian social-democratic ideas of what a “socialist” “economy” would look like. However, it is useful here to indicate exactly why a moneyless “economy” would work and why the “calculation argument” is flawed as an objection to it. Mises argued that without money there was no way a socialist economy would make “rational” production decisions. Not even von Mises denied that a moneyless society could estimate what is likely to be needed over a given period of time (as expressed as physical quantities of definite types and sorts of objects). As he argued, “calculation in natura in an economy without exchange can embrace co
