Mises's Argument: Marx's Concept of Central Planning is Utopian, Demonstrably Unworkable

My main purpose in this section is to examine Mises's argument that Marx's concept of central planning is "utopian" in Marx's own sense of the word -- that is, is demonstrably unworkable, as is revealed through an analysis of the way the existing capitalist economy works. Mises contends that advanced technological production is too complex to be subsumed under a conscious plan and therefore must be broken up into subplans that require coordination. But since Marxian socialism eschews the use of money, there is no suitable common denominator for the quantitative calculations that decentralized coordination requires.

--Don Lavoie, Rivalry and Central Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 60.