Planned Chaos.

VON MISES, Ludwig.

Item Number: 3537

Irvington-On-Hudson, New York: The Foundation For Economic Education, 1947.

First edition of the economist’s epilogue to “Socialism”. Octavo, original green cloth. Light wear to the bottom cloth, near fine in a very good dust jacket. Signed by Von Mises on the half title page. Rare in the original dust jacket and signed. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

The title comes from Mises's description of the reality of central planning and socialism, whether of the national variety (Nazism) or the international variety (communism). Rather than create an orderly society, the attempt to central plan has precisely the opposite effect. By short-circuiting the price mechanism and forcing people into economic lives contrary to their own chosing, central planning destroys the capital base and creates economic randomness that eventually ends in killing prosperity.