> It should be noted that Hayek and von Mises faced rebuttals
> from a number of economic writers including the Polish
> Marxist economist, Oskar Lange (who argued that market socialism
> could provide an answer to Hayek's objections to socialism) while
> other writers like Paul Sweezy and Ernest Mandel defended
> the feasibility of a planned socialist economy. In more recent
> times, the British economists, Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott
> have attempted to answer directly Haykek's arguments and to
> defend the feasibilty of a planned economy.
None of these deal with the problem of organizing instrumental activity in an ideal community as conceived by Marx.
He understands the "economic" problem in ancient terms as the problem of meeting the "needs" of a "good" life. The content of a good life is non-economic; it is ethical - creating and appropriating beauty and truth within relations of mutual recognition. It is the problem of "friends" (in a sense derived from Plato and Aristotle) who, as friends, "should have all things in common."
So the "economic" problem, in this sense, is capable of being solved. "Universally developed individuals," who, by definition, have the developed capabilities required for both the instrumental and end in itself activity that define, respectively, what Marx calls "the realm of necessity" and "the true relam of freedom," meet their "needs" in the above sense with a minimum expenditure of time and energy.
Because they are "friends," the "interest" of each is in the meeting of the "needs" of all since this is a prerequisite for the relations of mutual recognition that define friendship (this makes the criterion of "Pareto efficiency" inapplicable; the harmony of "interests" makes it impossible to make anyone better off by making others worse off). So,
"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ ch02.htm
There is no "incentive" problem.
"Time of labour, even if exchange value is eliminated, always remains the creative substance of wealth and the measure of the cost of its production. But free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the product, partly for free activity which— unlike labour—is not determined by a compelling extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfillment of which is regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to one's inclination.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus- value/ch21.htm
The ideal principle of distributive "justice" freely governs the willing and acting of all.
"In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co- operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"
It is both an ethical and an "efficiency" requirement that the instrumental activity that defines "the realm of necessity" be organized through non-market relations of mutual recognition.
"the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm
Ted