In the context of intellectual history, the argument against socialism was framed as the viability of the “socialist mode of production”.
The central argument against socialism is the impossibility of that mode of production on two points: calculation and incentives – with the debate only over the relative importance of each.
Second, it is non-logical to disconnect the notion of production from economy. Because that is the function of an economy: production, distribution and exchange, in patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. An economy is a means of production. Otherwise the term has no rational meaning.
Third -and this is important – socialist, postmodern and totalitarian humanist dogma is constructed in obscurant language by intent for the purpose of deception.
So by stating economic concepts in operational language, as is required by the canons of science, we illustrate the difference between belief and action, and between the irrational and the rational, and between the impossible and the possible.
The socialist method or mode of production is impossible both logically and demonstrably.
The vague term ‘economic system’ is a form of deception.
The capitalist means of production is possible because both the incentives to do what we do not wish to do, and the means of calculating how to do so, are available to us; such that by doing what we may not wish to do, we do what we are capable of doing, and by doing so satisfy the wants of others, such that we may finally satisfy our own wants.
The socialist means of production is not possible. It is impossible because neither the means of calculation, nor the incentive to do what we do not desire to, exists in that method of production.
Marxism is the biggest organized systemic set of lies since the invention of scriptural monotheism. It is the most murderous religion ever created by man – by replacing mystical allegory with verbal obscurantism and pseudoscience.
If you cannot explain an economic argument in operational language you are either engaged in ignorance or deception or perpetuating deception out of ignorance.