Market Socialism and Socialist Values

Abstract

The use of the market mechanism against the background of socialist institutions is not inconsistent with the values that define a socialist economy. The market as an allocative device neither entails material incentives of a bourgeois sort nor need it result in a radically unequal distribution of wealth and power. And contrary to the theoretically inadequate and empirically mistaken thesis of technological determinism, the market emphasis on efficiency need not result in an authoritarian organization of the workplace, fragmentation of work, or any other manifestations of alienated labor. Market socialism captures the advantages of the market minus its capitalist shortcomings.