Myth of U.S.S.R.'s Strong Economy
by Brian Mitchell

· "No one now really believes that the Soviet economy functioned in any orderly fashion," said Richard Ebeling, head of the business and economics department at Hillsdale College in Michigan. "Everybody excepts the fact that the official statistics were distorted for political propagandistic reasons and were far from the actual facts of the case."

· Socialist economics had gained ground in the West. Polish economist Oskar Lange had seemed to prove that "market socialism" could work using various mechanisms as substitutes for prices.

This contradicted the market-based economics of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. "The profession thought that Mises and Hayek had been defeated," said Ebeling of Hillsdale College.