Socialist Economic Calculation and the Scurrilous Hegelian Metaphysics of the Marxian Doctrine

The socialist tracts deal with everything except the essential and unique problem of socialism, viz., economic calculation. It is only in the last years that socialist writers have no longer been able to avoid paying attention to this primordial matter. They have begun to suspect that the Marxian technique of smearing “bourgeois” economics is not a sufficient method for the realization of the socialist utopia. They have tried to substitute a theory of socialism for the scurrilous Hegelian metaphysics of the Marxian doctrine. They have embarked upon designing schemes for socialist economic calculation. Of course, they have lamentably failed in this task.

--Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007), 3:703.