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Austrian economist Ludwig Mises’s central role in the socialist calculation debates has been consensually acknowledged since the early 1920s. Yet, only recently Nemeth, O’Neill, Uebel, and others have drawn particular attention to Mises’s encounter with logical empiricist 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 at hand reconstructs and critically compares the different conceptions of rationality defended by Neurath and Mises. The author presents two different resolutions to a detected tension in Mises’s deliberations on rationality: the first is implicit in Neurath’s, O’Neill’s, and Salerno’s reading of Mises and faces several interpretational problems; the author proposes a divergent interpretation. Based on the reconstructions of Neurath’s and Mises’s conceptions of rationality, the author suggests some implications with respect to Viennese Late Enlightenment and the socialist calculation debates.

For better understanding the connections between the Viennese circles in which Menger was involved, it is necessary to make some remarks on the Viennese context where they developed. Since the end of the 19th century up to the interwar period, Vienna was a very lively city from a cultural point of view, the birthplace of modernism (Janik & Toulmin, 1973). In the age of the late Habsburg monarchy as well as in the post-First War ‘Red Vienna’, the intellectual, scientific and artistic life of the Austrian capital was so fervent that those years are recalled by historians as the Viennese Enlightenment, the gay apocalypse and the golden autumn: ‘two generations were enough to cover the whole period. The economist Carl Menger (1841–1920) shaped the beginning, and his son, the mathematician Karl Menger (1902–1985), witnessed the end’ (Golland & Sigmund, 2000, p. 34). After the First World War, from an economic point of view, a high inflation overwhelmed the country; while from a political point of view, ‘the new Austria was fragmented and labyrinthine’ (Leonard, 1998, p. 6): the Christian socialists were the conservative part of the society, but one third of citizens supported the new social-democratic party, which had the majority in Vienna.

[In Menger's Reminiscences this part is Chapter Five (‘Vignettes of the members of the Circle in 1927’), where Moritz Schlick is described as ‘an extremely refined, somewhat introverted man’; Hans Hahn, ‘a strong, extroverted, highly articulate person who always spoke with a loud voice’; Olga Hahn Neurath, ‘always smoking a big cigar’; Otto Neurath, ‘a man of immense energy and curiosity, very fast in grasping new ideas, through an often distorting lens of socialist philosophy’; Rudolf Carnap, ‘systematic, sometimes to the point of pedantry…a truly liberal and completely tolerant man’; Victor Kraft ‘[who] like Schlick, Feigl and myself, by no means shared all the political ideas and ideals of Neurath’; Friedrich Waissman, ‘a very clear expositor [who] unfortunately dragged out his studies [of mathematics and philosophy] at the University’; Herbert Feigl, ‘[who] did probably more than anyone else to make some of the Viennese ideas known in America’; Theodor Radakovic, ‘a student of Hahn's…too shy to take part in the discussion of the Circle, although he attended the meetings regularly’; Edgar Zilsel, ‘a militant leftist [who] wanted to be considered only as close to, and not as a member of, the Circle’; and Felix Kaufmann, ‘a philosopher of law, an ardent phenomenologist, the only participant with a true sense of humour’ (Menger, 1994, pp. 55–68). These following parts are those unpublished].

Purpose – The aim of this note is to explain what Hayek meant when in The Sensory Order he claimed that Mach was one of his fundamental readings in psychology while he was writing The Sensory Order.

Methodology/approach – A historical approach to show the different role Mach played in Hayek and Neurath/Carnap.

Findings•A parallelism between Mach–Kant and Hayek–Mach in psychology.•Hayek's rejection of Mach's final philosophical approach as well as his aversion against the Vienna Circle's positivism as forms of metaphysics, based on an awkward definition of isomorphism.

Research limitations/implications•The human sciences cannot be reduced to the natural sciences.•Any form of knowledge is knowledge of “how” rather than of “what”.

Originality/value of the paper•To show Mach's role in Hayek's psychology.•To consider The Sensory Order as a relevant part of Hayek's struggle against reductionism in psychology.

This paper aims to provide a history of a number of intellectual debates in marketing theory and consumer research. It outlines the key arguments involved, highlights the politics and acrimoniousness that often accompanied the competition for academic prestige or practitioner remuneration. It weaves the contents of the special issue into its narrative.

This article engages in a broad historical survey of the history of marketing thought, as it pertains to intellectual debate and disputation.

While scholars often articulate objectivity as an intellectual ideal, many of the debates that are explored reveal a degree of intellectual intolerance and this is refracted through the institutional system that structures marketing discourse.

This account provides an introduction to the intellectual debates of the last century, highlighting the ebb and flow of marketing thought. It calls attention to debates that are largely under explored and highlights the politics of knowledge production in marketing and consumer research.

§ 1. My presentation to the Circle. When I presented my theory to the Circle, I found a mixed reception. Schlick, however, slightly shook his head, the mock-smile appeared on his face, and he tried to exchange glances. Only Waismann responded. Kaufmann was too loyal a friend to openly go against me even though he strongly felt that I was wrong. And Carnap was in deep thought.

In 1936, when H. G. Wells presented his proposal for a ‘World Encyclopaedia’ to the Royal Institution, an action‐oriented response commensurate with the magnitude of his idea did not ensue. ‘It is a super university I am thinking of, a world brain; no less’, he said. The speech was printed in an obscure book titled World Brain, which is now out of print and hardly ever cited or discussed where it should be.

It is demonstrated that the Austrian school in economics had very different ideas about the creation and change of social institutions and especially about the relation of state and market, which is still one of the fundamental problems of economic theory. Menger′s fundamental distinction of pragmatic and organic institutions and Wieser′s contrary model are discussed, followed by the “impossibility theorem” of Mises and the contrary position of Schumpeter. Hayek′s liberation model of society is presented and criticised, and finally Menger′s position is interpreted as one of moderate liberal interventionism.

Analyses the economics of socialism within the Marxian tradition. The ideas of Marx and Engels are included, as are those of the theorists of the Second International. The debate on market socialism associated with Oskar Lange also receives attention. The evolution of Mises′s and Hayek′s responses is traced, and there is an outline of how economists in Eastern Europe have come to similar conclusions to these Austrians. Concludes with an assessment of the economics of socialism in the work of contemporary theorists.

§ 1. The first piece of news about Vienna that reached me in September 1931, after arriving in Genoa, was quite charming; I mention it and since many later recollections about Vienna that I shall have to record are quite the opposite of charming, Austrians have always been fond of swallows. There was a superstition, especially among peasants, that a house was safe from fire if they had built a nest under its roof. Every year, the Viennese smiled when the first swallows returned from the South – an event always recorded in the newspaper because it heralded the advent of summer, and when the swallows were leaving, everyone was a bit sad, because another summer was gone. In September 1931, however, something unprecedented happened. A sudden, premature frost caught the poor birds on their flight to the South. By the hundreds they fell exhausted to the ground, unable to continue their journey. But, as the newspapers reported, the Austrians chartered airplanes to take their little friends to Italy.