Market Socialism PDF
Preview Market Socialism
w EFZGK njiznicno dokumenlacicjseknit ar D3 ffi 330.342 830011 506/ 8.617 II ll ll lll lllllllllllll llll llll lllll ll Il l ll rsBNo -19-827700- 002 M A R K E T S O C I A L I S M EDITED BY J U L IA N LE G R A N D A N D S A U L E S T R IN C L A R E N D O N PRESS ■ O X F O R D 1989 Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petalingjaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York © the several contributors 1989 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Market socialism 1. Socialism. Economic aspects I. Le Grand, Julian II. Hstrin, Saul 335 ISBN 0-19-827701-6 ISBN 0-19-827700-8 (pbk.) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Market socialism / edited by Julian Le Grand and Saul Estrin, Bibliography Includes index. 1, Socialism. 2. Mixed economy. I. Le Grand, Julian II. Estrin, Saul. HX73.M345 1989 335-8— dci9 88-38793 ISBN 0-19-827701-6 ISBN 0-19-827700-8 (pbk.) Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd Guildford and King’s Lynn Preface After Labour’s defeat in the 1983 General Election— the second defeat in a row— the Fabian Society called together a group of sympathetic academics and others to a meeting to discuss what had gone wrong. At that meeting Julian Le Grand and Raymond Plant argued that perhaps the major current problem faced by the Left, including the Labour Party, was its loss of an intellectual base. Many of the traditional socialist forms of economic organization— such as central planning or nationalization— were widely perceived as failures; even collec tivist values were discredited. The Left was no longer in the vanguard of intellectual radicalism; rather it was the so-called New Right that was producing radical ideas for social reform and change, ideas to which the Left could only respond with a limp defence of the status quo. What was needed was nothing less than a rethink of socialism: a re-evaluation of its basic tenets and a reconstruction of its philosophical and economic foundations. After the meeting Julian Le Grand wrote to the then General Secretary of the Fabian Society, Ian Martin, to suggest that a group be set up to meet on a regular basis and to begin rethinking and reconstructing socialist ideas. There was an enthusiastic response to the idea, and the Socialist Philosophy Group was set up by the Fabian Society under the joint convenorship of Le Grand, Martin, and Plant. At the first meeting of the Group, David Miller presented a paper 011 market socialism. This aroused considerable interest, and the topic formed the basis of many subsequent discussions in the Group. During the course of those discussions it became apparent that several of the Group’s members had a common interest in the ideas grouped under the umbrella of market socialism— ideas that seemed to be worthy of further develop ment and of dissemination to a wider audiencc. This book is the result. VI Preface Although each chapter in this book is individually authored, it is in a real sense a collaborative— dare one say, socialist— effort. Each contributor has read, and commented extensively on, the others’ contributions. We have held several meetings to discuss the material and to iron out differences. We have not always been successful at the latter; but the differences that remain are small and do not, we believe, detract from the book’s intellectual coherence. We have tried to make the book accessible to as many people as possible. To this end we have tried so far as possible to avoid technical jargon and specialist analyses. We have also tried not to burden the reader with excessive footnotes and references. Footnotes have been kept to a minimum; the references are collected at the end of the book. We have many debts. We owe a special one to the Executive and staff of the Fabian Society, particularly the" two successive General Secretaries, Ian Martin and John Willman, for their encouragement and support of the Socialist Philosophy Group over the years. We have benefited greatly from all the contributions to the debates on the topic within the Group itself, including (and perhaps especially) the contributions from those who profoundly disagree with our arguments. Many other friends and colleagues have helped us develop and refine our views. Jane Dickson bore the brunt of the organization and additional typing. Finally, our families have had to tolerate the demands of the project, as well as those of our normal occupations and preoccupations. To them all, our deepest thanks. PETER ABELL SAUL ESTRIN JULIAN LE GRAND DAVID MILLER RAYMOND PLANT DAVID WINTER Summer ig88 Contents viii About the Authors 1 1. Market Socialism Saul Estrin and Julian Le Grand 2. Why Markets? 25 David Miller 3. Socialism, Markets, and End States 50 Raymond Plant 4. An Equitarian Market Socialism 78 Peter Abell 5. Planning in a Market Socialist Economy 100 Saul Estrin and David Winter 6. Market Socialism and the Reform of the Capitalist Economy 139 David Winter 7. Workers’ Co-operatives: Their Merits and their 165 Limitations Saul Estrin 8. Markets, Welfare, and Equality 193 Julian Le Grand References 213 217 Index About the Authors peter Abell is currently Head of Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. He was formerly Director of Research at the Social and Economic Studies Unit at Imperial College, University of London, and Professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham. His interests are in co-operatives, particularly in developing countries. He is the author of two books, Small Scale Industrial Cooperatives in Developing Countries, with N. Mahoney (Oxford University Press, 1988), and Establishing Support Systems for Industrial Co-operatives: Case Studies from the Third World (Gower, 1988). Saul estrin was educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Sussex, and has worked at Southampton and Cornell Universities. Since 1984 he has been in the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics. His research has focused on comparative economic systems, with books on indicative planning and self-management in Yugoslavia, as well as numerous papers on producer co-operatives in Western Europe. He is currently working on privatization in Britain and France. julian le grand is Professor of Public Policy at the School for Advanced Urban Studies at the University of Bristol and a Research Director at the Suntory Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines at the London School of Economics, where he co-directs the Centre’s Welfare State Programme. His books include The Strategy of Equality (Allen and Unwin, 1982), The Economics of Social Problems, with Ray Robinson (Macmillan, 1984), and Not Only the Poor: The Middle Classes and the Welfare State, with R. Goodin (Allen and Unwin, 1987). He was co-founder with Ian Martin and Raymond Plant of the Socialist Philosophy Group. david miller is Official Fellow in Social and Political Theory at Nuffield College, Oxford. Among his publications are Social fustice (Oxford University Press, 1976) and Anarchism (Dent, 1984). He has been working for some years on the ethical About the Authors IX underpinnings of market socialism, and the results of this work will shortly be published in book form under the title Market, State, and Community (Oxford University Press). Raymond plant is Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton. He is the author of books on Hegel, Political Philosophy and Welfare, Citizenship, Conservative Capitalism, etc., and the Fabian pamphlet Equality, Markets and the State. He was co-founder with Julian Le Grand and Ian Martin of the Socialist Philosophy Group. david w inter is a Lecturer in the Economics Department of the University of Bristol. He has recently published papers on the consumption goods markets of centrally planned economies and in particular of Poland, and the determinants of British government expenditure. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the the Suntory Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines at the London School of Economics, where he is a member of the Centre’s Welfare State Programme. I Market Socialism Saul Estrin and Julian Le Grand T his book has two aims. The first is to ‘couple’ markets and socialism. We hope to show that markets can be used to achieve socialist ends. The use of markets in this way is what we mean by market socialism, and the chapters in this book show how this may be done in a variety of contexts. An important corollary is the ‘decoupling’ of capitalism and markets. While it may be impossible to have capitalism without markets (at least in part because, as we argue later, all industrial systems, whether capitalist, socialist, or mixed, inevitably use markets of one kind or another), it is perfectly possible to have markets without capitalism. The second aim is to start the radical reorientation of socialist thinking that is required by a proper understanding of market socialism. The market mechanism is the most efficient way of co-ordinating decentralized economic decision-making. This means eschewing the tendency to centralized intervention in the economy characteristic of socialist parties. Perhaps more funda mentally, it means a change in our understanding of the appropriate role of the state. Mistrust of the intentions of bureaucrats and the effectiveness of public interventions leads market socialists to seek to err on the side of laissez-faire. If one wishes to ensure socialist outcomes from a market mechanism, one must alter the environment in which markets operate to ensure that such outcomes are in the private interest of individuals, rather than use the state to impose the public interest from above. This leads some of the chapters that follow to focus on institutional changes and legal reforms conducive to the socialist vision.
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