ALL RED FEATHER MATERIALS ARE ALWAYS FREE TO STUDENTS AND TO THOSE WHO TEACH THEM....T R Young

Marxian Social Theory Part VI:
Market Socialism

SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES

by

T. R. Young
The Red Feather Institute

Market Socialism has several features:

1.  Workers Own the Factories, Shops, Farms and  Mines in which they work.

2.  Workers elect management teams and approve all policies of investment, profit distribution, labor process, and hiring/firing.

3.  Workers become vested in stock ownership after some probationary time...a year is usual.  Sometimes, vestment is progressive; that is, one increases one's share in stock certificates increases in set stages after review of work record by a jury of one's peers.

4. Workers must sell stock ownership when one leaves the firm; prices are fixed at current market prices for such stocks.  Workers can then invest proceeds of divestment into mutual funds as they choose.

5. Worker owned firms pay taxes to fund programs for the general good: schools, health care, transport, public health, parks and recreation and other as community assembles decide.

6. High Profit firms [those with capital intentive production, those dealing in luxury goods, those in new goods and services in high demand and those dealing more in human desire than in human need; these pay taxes at a higher rate than do low-profit, labor intensive and essential goods and services [food, protection, pollution control, education and such].

7. Decisions about social investment are made collectively in local communities.  Firms apply for and recieve licenses to do business in a given community; failure to comply with safety and quality standards are cause for revocation of license.

8. Governance is minimal; terms are limited; offices are rotated while elections are informationally rich and interactively open.

9. Public Utilities are co-ops in which both consumers and workers share governance and profits.  Power, transportation, Policing, mail and communication, Sewage and Water facilities, public records and other such community services are organized as co-ops.

10. Public referenda provide for recall of any and all officials; for development and renewal policy; for new social investment; for taxation programs and for educational policy.  Governance is, in Barber's Terms, a strong democracy.

References to Market Socialism

There are several references which those of you interested in Economic Sociology, Sociology of Work and/or the Political Economy of Market Socialism at which one might take a good look: I forgot to append them in the earlier post. But you can down- load them more easily this way. Have fun.

Bardham, P.K., and John Roemer.

1993. Market Socialism: The Current Debate. Oxford University Press.

Kenworthy, Lane.

What kind of Economic System: A Leftist Guide. in Socialist Review, April-June: pp. 102-124. [I found this to be a very useful overview of both the forms of capitalism and the forms of socialism...18 of one and four of another if memory serves.

Roemer, John.

1994. A Future for Socialism. Harvard University Press.

Schweickart, David.

1996. Against Capitalism. Cambridge U. Press. [The title really should be 'Since Capitalism has so many problems, Let Us think about Market Socialism.]'

Laski, Brus and Kazimierz.

1989. From Marx to Market. Clarendon Press.

All these are helpful background references...and they lead one in several directions to other basic and earlier work.

TRY