All economic change, therefore, would involve operations the value of which could neither be predicted beforehand nor ascertained after they had taken place. Everything would be a leap in the dark.
Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy.
Socialism was the lone dissenting voice to challenge the prevailing intellectual orthodoxy of his time. Blind to the massive evidence of socialism's failure that started accumulating as soon as the Bolsheviks came to power, collectivists throughout the world were singing paeans to the wave of the future that would allegedly sweep the outmoded capitalist methods of production into oblivion. Mises does not use this notion to describe any processes entailed in producing goods. Arbitrary production plans set by the caprice of some commissar or planning board do not constitute economic activity. To qualify as economic activity in Mises' use of the term, production must be guided by rational principles.