Market Socialism: The Current Debate

Abstract

With the decline of command economies in Eastern Europe, China and elsewhere, the systemic issue of the feasability of combining the market mechanism with some form of public or collective ownership or control over the distribution of surplus has assumed topical importance. The essays in this book aim at advancing the old debate on this issue to a new analytical stage: questions of incentive compatability, agency problems, depoliticization of economic decisions and those of justice and worker autonomy are at the heart of the discussion. The defenders as well as critics of market-socialist proposals in this book are particularly sensitive to the centrality of these questions.