> The problem is that it is all well and good to say we should be
> "socializing markets," but the real world has been moving exactly in
> the opposite direction of privatizing the public domain (DNA, water,
> information, social programs, state-owned enterprises -- you name it,
> they have or are trying to privatize it).
> Yoshie
Certain degree of interest in market socialism parallels period noted
above. Good bit of MS literature is traceable to 1980s although
some folks were looking at Yugoslavia (and to lesser extent Hungary's
post-68 'New Economic Mechanism') prior to that time.
Suspicion of the state is such common currency right now that market
socialists have become skeptical about democratic control of macro-
economy. They stake their claim on decentralized economic decision-
making in which supposed benefits of market activity - efficiency,
competition, responsiveness, liberty - are decoupled from capitalism.
But market emphasis leads even Schweickart, an advocate of worker self-
management who appears to be one of the most socialist MS-types, to a
generally favorable impression of present-day Chinese 'reforms.'
fwiw: David Miller - "Marx, Communism, and Markets", _Political Theory_,
vol. 15, no. 2, 1987) finds examples of MS in Marx, M's criticisms of
approach in _Critique of the Gotha Program_ (and, earlier, in _Poverty
of Philosophy_) notwithstanding. If memory serves, Nove makes similar
claim in _Economics of Feasible Socialism_. Michael Hoover
