> According to ypu, Pierson has two main
> objections to market socialism.
> 1) A market socialist economy cannot be a "pure" free market economy but
> will require extensive government regulation to deal with externalities,
> 2) Market socialism cannot be achieved by reformist means.
> --Justin
> > I think pen-l readers (market socialists and non alike) may find
> > SOCIALISM AFTER COMMUNISISM: THE NEW MARKET SOCIALISM by Christopher
> > Pierson (Penn State , 1995) of interest.
> > Ron Baiman
I recently read a review - I'v not read Pierson myself - by David
Schweickart in American Political Science Review...according to
S, P maintains, on the one hand, that market socialism is
unfeasible because it is too radical - it takes aim at the heart
of the contemporary economic order and aims to replace capitalist
ownership of the means of production with some form of social
ownership...on the other hand, S says that P asserts that market
socialism is unfeasible because it isn't radical enough - that
market socialists have insufficiently addressed ways in which
the political state and civil society can be more democratic and
that market socialists haven't adequately explored questions of
ownership...
S suggests that P's "logical muddle" is the result of his failure
to address the question of class power - that the fundamental
reason for the infeasibility of market social is the sheer power
of the capitalist class...This class - identified by S as the 1% or
so of the US population that owns one-third or more of the wealth -
has rigged the electoral game so as to make certain there will be no
effective challenge to it power in the foseeable future...S indicates
that references to this class, to its lock on the mass media,
campaign financing, are essentially absent from P's book...
I should mention that I haven't read Schweickart's "Against
Capitalism" either...but I have read several shorter pieces
that he has written on market socialism and I've heard him speak
defending market socialism...I don't recall him making the
above point with respect to his own model ("economic democracy")..
..does he address it in his book?...Michael
