Market Socialism

[AnarchoCommunistEyepatch]

Market Socialism:

What is it? because i have no idea.
A friend tried to briefly explain it to me as market economics but extremely heavily regulated by the state.

[PoliticalNightmare]

A free market system of producers' co-operatives competing on an open market to provide cheaper, higher quality goods and services to the consumer. The commodity is still used as an exchange value (hence the physical properties are abstracted during exchange) and private property still exists, it is just under ownership by producers rather than the community. Some prefer the term, workers' capitalism.

[syndicat]

There are different forms of "market socialism". if you read Robert Dahl's book on "economic democracy" or David Ellerman's book on worker owned cooperatives, you will get a model of means of production that are privately owned by groups of workers, who scarf down surpluses, that is, profits, based on their market power, just as capitalist firms do.

David Schweickart's various books such as "Against Capitalism" defends the Yugoslav model of market socialism which is based on ownership of the means of production by governments, which lease them to worker cooperatives to run. It's a more technocratic model in that it presupposes control over allocation of capital by state banks.

And then the most technocratic model of them all is the ownership of shares in all the companies by all the people or something like that, which is I think what John Roemer advocates. It's really little different than a gigantic set of ESOPs with little actual say by workers.

Market socialism has many of the same problems that capitalism does such as incentives to shift costs onto others thru things like pollution or poor product quality.

[robbo203]

Market Socialism:

What is it? because i have no idea.
A friend tried to briefly explain it to me as market economics but extremely heavily regulated by the state.


Market socialism is just capitalism with a pretty face. It is a contradiction in terms. There can be no market in a socialist society because common ownership of the means of production precludes economic exchange

[Amphictyonis]

A free market system of producers' co-operatives competing on an open market to provide cheaper, higher quality goods and services to the consumer. The commodity is still used as an exchange value (hence the physical properties are abstracted during exchange) and private property still exists, it is just under ownership by producers rather than the community. Some prefer the term, workers' capitalism.

Competition is one source of exploitation. Cooperation is socialism,competition= a capitalist construct.

[PoliticalNightmare]

Competition is one source of exploitation. Cooperation is socialism,competition= a capitalist construct.

I wasn't particularly advocating the system, just describing it. I even labelled it "workers' capitalism". Some market socialists might disagree with you, though.

[NewSocialist]

Here's everything you need to know. It's a debate between a market socialist and Michael Albert.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et91gXGMLwA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzaehWi6OeI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg8uhlwF2Kc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF33tyD5ZF0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU8AF0SdsnE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU-D_tNZluQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQqIbOGzHt8
you can also read a long debate between them on Znet -http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/zdebatealbertvsschweickart.htm

[Kamil]

Thank you for all the responses, I "know" what it is but wanted to get your opinions on its innerworkings and the pros/cons. This brings me to another question, are there are any Market Socialist groups or tendencies here on revleft? Or openly "Titoist" groups out there?

[syndicat]

Solidarity Economy Network are market socialists. Carl Davidson, of Commitees of Correpondence, is a cochair of the SEN.