There Was No Such Thing As Value Calculation; There Was Only Price Calculation, Which Could Come into Existence Only Where the Means of Production Were Privately Owned

It is before this background that Mises’s socialist-calculation argument must be appreciated. Mises argued that there were no general principles of value calculation, because there was no such thing as value calculation in the first place. There was in fact only price calculation, and it could come into existence only at those times and places where the means of production were privately owned. It not only followed that the existence of economic calculation was a historically contingent event. It also followed that the specific categories of capitalism—capital, income, profit, loss, savings, etc.—could not be assumed to exist in other types of social organization.

--Jörg Guido Hülsmann, introduction to the third edition of Epistemological Problems of Economics, by Ludwig von Mises (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2003), xxxiv.