# The Socialist Calculation Debate **URL:** **By** Steven Horwitz **Published:** July 14, 2020 --- Market prices allow unplanned capitalist economies to accomplish rational allocation by providing a common denominator to compare the many different inputs and outputs in an economy. ## Summary: In Ludwig von Mises’s essay “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth,” he argued that socialist planned economies could not work because they lacked a way to rationally allocate resources. Market prices allow unplanned capitalist economies to accomplish rational allocation by providing a common denominator to compare the many different inputs and outputs in an economy.