Marxism–Leninism The phrase market socialism has occasionally been used in reference to any attempt by a
Soviet-type planned economy to introduce market elements into its economic system. In this sense, market socialism was first attempted during the 1920s in the Soviet Union as the
New Economic Policy (NEP) before being abandoned. Later, elements of market socialism were introduced in Hungary (nicknamed
goulash communism), Czechoslovakia (sloganized as
socialism with a human face), Yugoslavia (known as
Titoism) in the 1970s and 1980s. The contemporary
economy of Belarus has been described as a market socialist system. The
Soviet Union attempted to introduce a market system with its
perestroika reforms under
Mikhail Gorbachev. During the later stages there was talk within top circles that the Soviet Union should move toward a market-based socialist system. Historically, these kinds of market socialist systems attempt to retain state ownership of the
commanding heights of the economy such as heavy industry, energy and infrastructure while introducing decentralised decision making and giving local managers more freedom to make decisions and respond to market demands. Market socialist systems also allow private ownership and
entrepreneurship in the service and other secondary economic sectors. The
market is allowed to determine prices for consumer goods and agricultural products, and farmers are allowed to sell all or some of their products on the open market and keep some or all of the profit as an incentive to increase and improve production. Both the Eastern European and Chinese socialist approaches to market reforms assume that a "market economy" is not necessarily a capitalist market economy, and that a socialist economy is not necessarily a planned economy. This view draws support from Karl Marx's observations that markets existed under historical modes of production such as the Roman slave market economy and feudal markets. and many Western economists and political scientists question the degree to which this model constitutes a form of market socialism, often preferring to describe it as
state capitalism. Although similar in name, market socialism differs markedly from the socialist market economy and
socialist-oriented market economy models practiced in the contemporary
People's Republic of China and
Socialist Republic of Vietnam, respectively. Officially these economic systems represent market economies that are in the long-term process of transition toward socialism. Key differences between models of market socialism and the Chinese and Vietnamese models include the role of private investment in enterprises, the lack of a social dividend or basic income system to equitably distribute state profits among the population and the existence and role of financial markets in the Chinese model—markets which are absent in the market socialist literature. In the Chinese system, directive planning based on mandatory output requirements and quotas were displaced by market mechanisms for most of the economy, including both the state and private sectors, although the government engages in
indicative planning for large state enterprises. These state-owned corporations have been reformed and become increasingly dynamic and a major source of revenue for the state in 2008, leading the economic recovery in 2009 during the wake of the global financial crises. This economic model is defended from a
Marxist–Leninist perspective which states that a planned socialist economy can only emerge after first developing the basis for socialism through the establishment of a market economy and commodity-exchange economy; and that socialism would only emerge after this stage has exhausted its historical necessity and gradually transforms itself into socialism.
Social democracy and democratic socialism Some
social democrats and
democratic socialists advocate forms of market socialism, some of which are based on self-management. Others advocate for a non-market
participatory economy based on decentralized economic planning.
Anarchism was the primary proponent of
mutualism and influenced many later
individualist anarchist and
social anarchist thinkers. The French philosopher
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is the first person to call himself an
anarchist and considered among its most influential theorists. Proudhon is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". Proudhon became a member of the
French Parliament after the
French Revolution of 1848, whereon he referred to himself as a
federalist. Proudhon's best-known assertion is that "
Property is theft!", contained in his first major work
What Is Property?, published in 1840. The book's publication attracted the attention of the French authorities. It also attracted the scrutiny of
Karl Marx, who started a correspondence with Proudhon. The two influenced each other and met in Paris while Marx was exiled there. Their friendship finally ended when Marx responded to Proudhon's
The Philosophy of Poverty with the provocatively titled
The Poverty of Philosophy. The dispute became one of the sources of the split between the anarchist and
Marxist wings of the
International Working Men's Association.
Mutualism is an
anarchist school of thought and market socialist
economic theory that advocates a
socialist society where each person possess a
means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the
free market. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank that would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate, just high enough to cover administration. Mutualism is based on a
labor theory of value which holds that when labor or its product is sold it ought to receive in exchange goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility". Mutualism originated from the writings of Proudhon. Mutualists oppose the idea of individuals receiving an income through loans, investments and rent as they believe these individuals are not laboring. Although opposed to this type of income, Proudhon expressed that he had never intended "to forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I think that all these manifestations of human activity should remain free and voluntary for all: I ask for them no modifications, restrictions or suppressions, other than those which result naturally and of necessity from the universalization of the principle of reciprocity which I propose". Insofar as they ensure the worker's right to the full product of their labor, mutualists support
markets or
artificial markets and
property in the product of labor. However, mutualists argue for conditional titles to land, whose ownership is legitimate only so long as it remains in use or occupation (which Proudhon called
possession), advocating
personal property in place of
private property. However, some individualist anarchists such as
Benjamin Tucker started calling possession as
property or
private property.
Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first American
anarchist For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, "[i]t is apparent [...] that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the
Individualist Anarchism of
Josiah Warren and
Stephen Pearl Andrews. [...]
William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form". Later, the American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker "was against both the state and capitalism, against both oppression and exploitation. While not against the market and property he was firmly against capitalism as it was, in his eyes, a state-supported monopoly of social capital (tools, machinery, etc.) which allows owners to exploit their employees, i.e., to avoid paying workers the full value of their labour. He thought that the "labouring classes are deprived of their earnings by usury in its three forms, interest, rent and profit". Therefore, "
Liberty will abolish interest; it will abolish profit; it will abolish monopolistic rent; it will abolish taxation; it will abolish the exploitation of labour; it will abolish all means whereby any labourer can be deprived of any of his product". This stance puts him squarely in the libertarian socialist tradition and, unsurprisingly, Tucker referred to himself many times as a socialist and considered his philosophy to be "[a]narchistic socialism". , American individualist anarchist
French individualist anarchist Émile Armand shows clearly opposition to capitalism and centralized economies when he said that the individualist anarchist "inwardly he remains refractory – fatally refractory – morally, intellectually, economically (The capitalist economy and the directed economy, the speculators and the fabricators of single systems are equally repugnant to him.)". He argued for a pluralistic economic logic when he said that "Here and there everything happening – here everyone receiving what they need, there each one getting whatever is needed according to their own capacity. Here,
gift and
barter – one product for another; there, exchange – product for representative value. Here, the producer is the owner of the product, there, the product is put to the possession of the collectivity". The Spanish individualist anarchist
Miguel Giménez Igualada thought that "capitalism is an effect of government; the disappearance of government means capitalism falls from its pedestal vertiginously. [...] That which we call capitalism is not something else but a product of the State, within which the only thing that is being pushed forward is profit, good or badly acquired. And so to fight against capitalism is a pointless task, since be it
State capitalism or Enterprise capitalism, as long as Government exists, exploiting capital will exist. The fight, but of consciousness, is against the State". His view on
class division and
technocracy are as follows "Since when no one works for another, the profiteer from wealth disappears, just as government will disappear when no one pays attention to those who learned four things at universities and from that fact they pretend to govern men. Big industrial enterprises will be transformed by men in big associations in which everyone will work and enjoy the product of their work. And from those easy as well as beautiful problems anarchism deals with and he who puts them in practice and lives them are anarchists. [...] The priority which without rest an anarchist must make is that in which no one has to exploit anyone, no man to no man, since that non-exploitation will lead to the limitation of property to individual needs".
Market anarchism is a market socialist form of
individualist anarchism,
left-libertarianism and
libertarian socialism associated with scholars such as
Kevin Carson, Roderick T. Long, Charles W. Johnson, Brad Spangler,
Samuel Edward Konkin III, Sheldon Richman,
Chris Matthew Sciabarra and
Gary Chartier, who stress the value of radically
free markets, termed
freed markets to distinguish them from the common conception which these libertarians believe to be riddled with
capitalist and
statist privileges. Referred to as left-wing market anarchists or market-oriented left-libertarians, The genealogy of contemporary left-wing market anarchism, sometimes labelled market-oriented left-libertarianism, overlaps to a significant degree with that of
Steiner–Vallentyne left-libertarianism as the roots of that tradition are sketched in the book
The Origins of Left-Libertarianism.
Carson–Long-style left-libertarianism is rooted in 19th-century
mutualism and in the work of figures such as
Thomas Hodgskin,
French Liberal School thinkers such as
Gustave de Molinari and the
American individualist anarchists Benjamin Tucker and
Lysander Spooner. While with notable exceptions market-oriented libertarians after Tucker tended to ally with the political right, relationships between those libertarians and the
New Left thrived in the 1960s, laying the groundwork for modern left-wing market anarchism. Left-wing market anarchism identifies with left-libertarianism which names several related yet distinct approaches to
politics, society, culture and political and social theory, which stress both
individual freedom and
social justice. Unlike
right-libertarians, left-libertarians believe that neither claiming nor
mixing one's labor with
natural resources is enough to generate full
private property rights and maintain that natural resources (land, oil, gold and trees) ought to be held in some
egalitarian manner, either unowned or
owned collectively. and theories, or under the condition that recompense is offered to the
local or
global community. == Criticism ==