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In the early 1930s, Nicholas Kaldor could be classified as an Austrian economist. The author reconstructs the intertwined paths of Kaldor and Friedrich A. Hayek to disequilibrium economics through the theoretical deficiencies exposed by the Austrian theory of capital and its consequences on equilibrium analysis.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The integration of capital theory into a business cycle theory by the Austrians and its shortcomings – e.g. criticized by Piero Sraffa and Gunnar Myrdal – called attention to the limitation of the theoretical apparatus of equilibrium analysis in dynamic contexts. This was a central element to Kaldor’s emancipation in 1934 and his subsequent conversion to John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). In addition, it was pivotal to Hayek’s reformulation of equilibrium as a social coordination problem in “Economics and Knowledge” (1937). It also had implications for Kaldor’s mature developments, such as the construction of the post-Keynesian models of growth and distribution, the Cambridge capital controversy, and his critique of neoclassical equilibrium economics.

The close encounter between Kaldor and Hayek in the early 1930s, the developments during that decade and its mature consequences are unexplored in the secondary literature. The author attempts to construct a coherent historical narrative that integrates many intertwined elements and personas (e.g. the reception of Knut Wicksell in the English-speaking world; Piero Sraffa’s critique of Hayek; Gunnar Myrdal’s critique of Wicksell, Hayek, and Keynes; the Hayek-Knight-Kaldor debate; the Kaldor-Hayek debate, etc.) that were not connected until now by previous commentators.

As a major theoretical breakthrough of the Marxist political economy based on the practice of China’s reform and opening up, the theory of socialist market economy constitutes an important part of the political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Its essence is that socialism (as a social system) and market economy (as a resource allocation mechanism) can be organically integrated to exert the advantages of both at the same time and generate new institutional and systematic advantages.

It has condensed many important theoretical viewpoints, involving major theoretical and practical issues, such as the relationship between the government and the market, the basic economic system, the income distribution system, the operation of the market economy and the opening up to the outside world, which have become the basic principles of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics.

The new practice of comprehensively deepening reform and building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way is bound to provide an impetus to the deepening and systematization of the theory of socialist market economy.