Lange is a distinguished socialist economist in the neoclassical tradition. His contribution to the calculation debate with Hayek, with Fred Taylor, On the Economic Theory of Socialism,
http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Theory-Socialism-Oscar-Lange/dp/067800613X
showed that on NCE postulates you could mimic market effects by shadow pricing. Hayek (rightly, in my view) took this as completely missing the point. As an Austrian institutionalist, he had no tolerance for neoclassical pieties. He is often mistaken as prophet of market socialism for this work, but it is in fact defense of pure planning.
Lange went into Poland's planning office after the war, where contact with the real world taught him the need for real market reforms rather than just market shadow pricing.
Here Lange, albiet of an older generation, made contact with Otto Sik, the architect of Dubcek's market liberalization in Czechoslovakia before the invasion, and intellectually with its forebears, Woldemierz Brus in Poland and Janos Kornai in Hungary, market socialist theorists who ended up as uncritical neolibs. Kornai's later The Socialist Economy is a combination of reasonable empirically based Hayekian critiques of planning and neoliberal crack-smoking, as is Brus' later work. I don't know if Sik ended up drinking that Kool-Aid. It's too bad about Kornai and Brus, because their early work was really very good.
--- Nurr <nurr at igc.org> wrote:
> Any opinions on these two:
>
> Oscar Lange, Oto Sik
>
> Thanks,
> Hep
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