Analytical philosophy has had a long but little noted influence on the development of ecological economics.The work of the left Vienna Circle, in particular of Otto Neurath, defended two central claims of ecological economics: first, economics needs to address the various ways in which economic institutions and relations are embedded within the physical world and have ecological preconditions that are a condition of their sustainability; second, reasonable economic and social choices cannot be founded on purely monetary valuations.Both of these claims were developed in two distinct but related debates that Otto Neurath engaged in.The first was the socialist calculation debate.The arguments of the Austrian critics of the possibility of socialism there, in particular Ludwig Mises and Friedrich Hayek, were aimed not only at socialism but at these two central claims of ecological economics.The second was the little known debate between the left Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School in the 1930s.In this debate one can discern the origins of two distinct traditions of political ecology that still remain in tension in subsequent debates: a science-based approach that is concerned with the material and ecological conditions for human well-being and social relationships; and a science-sceptical approach that takes the environmental crisis to be founded in a technocratic commitment to the domination of humans and nature that is built into the constitution of scientific reason.In this chapter we explore these different debates and show the continuing significance of the analytical tradition to a defensible ecological economics.As shall be evident, running through the debates is a common theme about the nature and limits of scientific and practical reason, a theme that retains its importance for understanding the relationship between ecology, democracy and political economy.1. Neurath, Mises and Weber: Choice in the absence of monetary units We begin by establishing Neurath's role in the development of ecological economics by exploring the connection between his work and that of K. William Kapp. 1 One of the central claims of social ecological economics concerns the limits of monetary exchange values in making social and environmental decisions.Consider the following formulation of that claim by Kapp: The formulation of environmental policies, the evaluation of environmental goals and the establishment of priorities require a substantive economic calculus in terms of social use values (politically evaluated) for which the formal calculus in monetary exchange values fails to provide a real measurenot only in socialist societies but also in capitalist economies.Hence the 'revolutionary' aspect of the environmental issue both as a theoretical and a practical problem.In short, we suggest that environmental values are social use values for which markets provide neither a direct measure nor an adequate indirect indicator.(1974: 38) Neurath and Weber are marked out by Kapp as the major figures whose work could found an understanding of these claims.Why is this?The origins of this claim can be traced back to Kapp's own earlier work on the socialist calculation debates.His doctoral dissertation Planwirtschaft und Aussenhandel (1936) engaged with Mises' critique of socialism.A distinctive feature of Kapp's understanding of the socialist calculation debates is the observation that the turn it had taken in the discussion of market models of socialism by Lange, Taylor and others had obscured what was at issue in the original debates between Neurath, Mises and Weber: 'the controversy initiated by O. Neurath, von Mises and MaxWeber got sidetracked in various attempts to calculate the prices of productive factors by 1 The relevance of Neurath's argumentation for ecological economics was first noted in Martínez-Alier (1987) and the parallel between Neurath and Kapp was stated in Martínez-Alier (1991a) and (1991b); the influen ce of the former on the latter was observed in his (2002: 33).means of Walras' and Cassel's systems of equations and O. Lange's later elaboration of a theoretical model of "competitive socialism".' (Kapp, 1955: 682).What was at stake in the earlier debate and was lost in the shift to market models of socialism was precisely the question about whether human well-being and its environmental conditions could adequately be captured by the monetary valuations of the market.This question was raised by Neurath's post-World War I proposals for socialization to which both Mises and Weber responded.As Kapp notes, for Neurath a socialist planned economy was based on social use values:By stating that 'useful effects' or free 'disposable time' are the measure of real wealth and thus of the quality of life Engels and Marx must have been convinced to have specified at least in general terms the alternative criteria for the planning and decision-making process in a socialist planned society.Few marxist writers have