Austrian economist Ludwig Mises is famous in the history of economic ideas for his central role in the socialist calculation debates of the first half of the 20th century. Yet, only recently attention was drawn to Mises’s encounter with logical empiricist and theoretician of war economics and socialization Otto Neurath. Despite several surprising agreements, Neurath and Mises certainly provide different answers to the questions “what is meant by rational economic theory” (Neurath) and whether “socialism is the abolition of rational economy” (Mises). Previous accounts and evaluations of the exchange between Neurath and Mises suffer from attaching little regard to their idiosyncratic uses of the term “rational.”
The paper reconstructs and critically compares the different conceptions of rationality defended by Neurath and Mises. Based on the reconstructions of Neurath’s and Mises’s conceptions of rationality, the author suggests some implications with respect to Viennese Late Enlightenment, contemporary rationality wars, the socialist calculation debates, and the foundations of welfare economics.