The Samuelson-Hicks Neoclassical-Keynesian Synthesis

The three decades between the end of the Second World War and 1975 saw the triumph of the “neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis” and of the mathematical formalism of equilibrium analysis in our discipline. Indeed, during this period, equilibrium analysis became master of economic science, though we should note that economists fell into two major camps concerning their use of the notion of equilibrium.

One camp followed Samuelson, who, after the publication of his Foundations of Economic Analysis,  joined Hicks in pioneering the neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis. Samuelson expressly embraced Lange and Lerner’s theory on the possibility of market socialism, and thus he blindly adopted the stance of these neoclassical authors regarding the challenge posed by the theorem of the impossibility of socialism, which Mises had discovered.

--Jesús Huerta de Soto, The Austrian School: Market Order and Entrepreneurial Creativity (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2008), 95.