In this paper, independent Jim Farmelant argues that the views of economist Ronald Coase of his youth when he was a socialist and his early economic writings, when combined with Marxian economics, can provide new insights when applied to contemporary debates on socialist planning.
A summary of the paper can be found below:
Ronald Coase is today most commonly associated with the so-called “Coase Theorem,” a formulation popularized by George Stigler and embedded in neoclassical law-and-economics textbooks. This association has obscured both the historical context of Coase‘s work and its original analytical ambitions. In particular, it has contributed to the neglect of the fact that the young Coase was deeply engaged with socialist debates, especially the socialist calculation controversy, and that his foundational contributions to economic theory initially posed serious challenges to the claim that markets are categorically superior to planning. This paper reconstructs Coase‘s early framework, situates it historically, and argues that—when combined with Marxian political economy—it provides a powerful lens for analyzing contemporary debates over digital and algorithmic economic planning.
You can read the paper here (it’s hosted on academia.edu, which requires a free account to access).