The Market, Mind and Rationality. From Vienna to Paris and Back

The mention of the great city of Vienna conjures up the many legacies of music, art and philosophy which it nurtured. But as important as any of these is the more prosaic legacy of the Austrian economists ranging from C. Menger to F. von Hayek. And for some, Vienna may conjure up as well, the debate that K. Polanyi had with these economists in the 1920s. However paradoxical it may seem, it was by virtue of this debate, carried on directly and indirectly over a lifetime, that Polanyi was first and foremost an Austrian, or rather an Austrian «in mirror image ». This was true not only by virtue of the years of his life and his work in Vienna, but more so because he was drawn into and remained a protagonist in the debate around the fundamental issues first raised by the Austrian economists. Menger and his followers E. von Bohm-Bawerk, and L. von Mises had established and diligently pursued much of the agenda of the debate. F. von Hayek was the important representative of this school in recent decades. The particular topic launched by von Mises in 1920 was whether a socialist economy was at all viable without the direction provided by market prices. Regulated or administered prices were bound to lead to economic confusion and the misallocation of resources he maintained.