A Vision of Market Socialism

The collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe reopens the question whether there is any form of socialism that might be adopted, with popular support, in the advanced societies. The experience of communism suggests, fairly unequivocally, that such a system must rely mainly on market mechanisms. Mikhail Gorbachev has gone on record as saying that markets and capitalism are not to be confused, that one predates the other by many millennia and, by implication, may postdate it too. But proposals for a socialist market economy, aiming to combine the efficiency advantages of markets with the humane and egalitarian goals of socialism, still meet with fierce resistance on both sides. Defenders of orthodox capitalism claim that you cannot r...