Socialism: A Property or Aggression Problem?

Abstract

There seems to be an unappreciated point of contention in the Austrian literature regarding the socialist economic calculation problem beyond the Mises–Hayek “dehomogenization” debate. This tension concerns the essence of socialism and the economic calculation problem: while some authors (e.g., Mises and Hayek) employ the classical definition of socialism as a socioeconomic system characterized by the collective ownership of the means of production, others (e.g., Hoppe and Huerta de Soto) define it as a system of institutionalized aggression. Moreover, the latter see aggression as the essential feature of socialism’s economic failure. In this article, we argue that this conception is a novelty unconnected to Mises’s views and that aggression should not be regarded as the essential problem of socialism. We illustrate our point with a thought experiment comparing the system we might call “voluntary socialism” with genuine capitalism. Finally, we review some historical examples of voluntary socialist communities and compare them to the ideal of pure voluntary socialism.