Market economy

Main article: Market socialism
Market socialism is a form of market economy where the means of production are socially owned. In a market socialist economy, firms operate according to the rules of supply and demand and operate to maximize profit; the principal difference between market socialism and capitalism being that the profits accrue to society as a whole as opposed to private owners.^[18]
The distinguishing feature between non-market socialism and market socialism is the existence of a market for factors of production and the criteria of profitability for enterprises. Profits derived from publicly owned enterprises can variously be used to reinvest in further production, to directly finance government and social services, or be distributed to the public at large through a social dividend or basic income system.^[19]
Advocates of market socialism such as Jaroslav Vaněk argue that genuinely free markets are not possible under conditions of private ownership of productive property. Instead, he contends that the class differences and inequalities in income and power that result from private ownership enable the interests of the dominant class to skew the market to their favor, either in the form of monopoly and market power, or by utilizing their wealth and resources to legislate government policies that benefit their specific business interests. Additionally, Vaněk states that workers in a socialist economy based on cooperative and self-managed enterprises have stronger incentives to maximize productivity because they would receive a share of the profits (based on the overall performance of their enterprise) in addition to receiving their fixed wage or salary. The stronger incentives to maximize productivity that he conceives as possible in a socialist economy based on cooperative and self-managed enterprises might be accomplished in a free-market economy if employee-owned companies were the norm as envisioned by various thinkers including Louis O. Kelso and James S. Albus
Market socialism traces its roots to classical economics and the works of Adam Smith, the Ricardian socialists and mutualist philosophers.^[21]
In the 1930s, the economists Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner developed a model of socialism that posited that a public body (dubbed the Central Planning Board) could set prices through a trial-and-error approach until they equaled the marginal cost of production in order to achieve perfect competition and pareto optimality. In this model of socialism, firms would be state-owned and managed by their employees and the profits would be disbursed among the population in a social dividend. This model came to be referred to as market socialism because it involved the use of money, a price system and simulated capital markets, all of which were absent from traditional non-market socialism.
A more contemporary model of market socialism is that put forth by the American economist John Roemer, referred to as economic democracy. In this model, social ownership is achieved through public ownership of equity in a market economy. A Bureau of Public Ownership would own controlling shares in publicly listed firms, so that the profits generated would be used for public finance and the provision of a basic income.
Some anarchists and libertarian socialists promote a form of market socialism in which enterprises are owned and managed cooperatively by their workforce so that the profits directly remunerate the employee-owners. These cooperative enterprises would compete with each other in the same way private companies compete with each other in a capitalist market. The first major elaboration of this type of market socialism was made by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and was called mutualism.
Self-managed market socialism was promoted in Yugoslavia by economists Branko Horvat and Jaroslav Vaněk. In the self-managed model of socialism, firms would be directly owned by their employees and the management board would be elected by employees. These cooperative firms would compete with each other in a market for both capital goods and for selling consumer goods.
Following the 1978 reforms, China developed what it calls a socialist market economy in which most of the economy is under state ownership, with the state enterprises organized as joint-stock companies with various government agencies owning controlling shares through a shareholder system. Prices are set by a largely free-price system and the state-owned enterprises are not subjected to micromanagement by a government planning agency. A similar system called socialist-oriented market economy has emerged in Vietnam following the Đổi Mới reforms in 1986. This system is frequently characterized as state capitalism instead of market socialism because there is no meaningful degree of employee self-management in firms, because the state enterprises retain their profits instead of distributing them to the workforce or government and because many function as de facto private enterprises. The profits neither finance a social dividend to benefit the population at large, nor do they accrue to their employees. In China, this economic model is presented as a preliminary stage of socialism to explain the dominance of capitalistic management practices and forms of enterprise organization in both the state and non-state sectors.
A wide range of philosophers and theologians have linked market economies to concepts from monotheistic religions. Michael Novak described capitalism as being closely related to Catholicism, but Max Weber drew a connection between capitalism and Protestantism. The economist Jeffrey Sachs has stated that his work was inspired by the healing characteristics of Judaism. Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks of the United Synagogue draws a correlation between modern capitalism and the Jewish image of the Golden Calf.^[22]
In the Christian faith, the liberation theology movement advocated involving the church in labor market capitalism. Many priests and nuns integrated themselves into labor organizations while others moved into the slums to live among the poor. The Holy Trinity was interpreted as a call for social equality and the elimination of poverty. However, the Pope was highly active in his criticism of liberation theology. He was particularly concerned about the increased fusion between Christianity and Marxism. He closed Catholic institutions that taught liberation theology and dismissed some of its activists from the church.^[23]
The Buddhist approach to the market economy was dealt with in E. F. Schumacher’s 1966 essay "Buddhist Economics". Schumacher asserted that a market economy guided by Buddhist principles would more successfully meet the needs of its people. He emphasized the importance or pursuing occupations that adhered to Buddhist teachings. The essay would later become required reading for a course that Clair Brown offered at University of California, Berkeley.^[24]
The economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that markets suffer from informational inefficiency and the presumed efficiency of markets stems from the faulty assumptions of neoclassical welfare economics, particularly the assumption of perfect and costless information and related incentive problems. Neoclassical economics assumes static equilibrium and efficient markets require that there be no non-convexities, even though nonconvexities are pervasive in modern economies. Stiglitz's critique applies to both existing models of capitalism and to hypothetical models of market socialism. However, Stiglitz does not advocate replacing markets, but instead states that there is a significant role for government intervention to boost the efficiency of markets and to address the pervasive market failures that exist in contemporary economies.^[25] A fair market economy is in fact a martingale or a Brownian motion model and for a participant competitor in such a model there is no more than 50% of success chances at any given moment. Due to the fractal nature of any fair market and being market participants subject to the law of competition which impose reinvesting an increasing part of profits, the mean statistical chance of bankruptcy within the half life of any participant is also 50%^[26] and 100% whether an infinite sample of time is considered.
Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert claim that "markets inherently produce class division".^[27] Albert states that even if everyone started out with a balanced job complex (doing a mix of roles of varying creativity, responsibility and empowerment) in a market economy, class divisions would arise, arguing:
Without taking the argument that far, it is evident that in a market system with uneven distribution of empowering work, such as Economic Democracy, some workers will be more able than others to capture the benefits of economic gain. For example, if one worker designs cars and another builds them, the designer will use his cognitive skills more frequently than the builder. In the long term, the designer will become more adept at conceptual work than the builder, giving the former greater bargaining power in a firm over the distribution of income. A conceptual worker who is not satisfied with his income can threaten to work for a company that will pay him more. The effect is a class division between conceptual and manual laborers, and ultimately managers and workers, and a de facto labor market for conceptual workers.^[27]
David McNally argues in the Marxist tradition that the logic of the market inherently produces inequitable outcomes and leads to unequal exchanges, arguing that Adam Smith's moral intent and moral philosophy espousing equal exchange was undermined by the practice of the free markets he championed. The development of the market economy involved coercion, exploitation and violence that Smith's moral philosophy could not countenance. McNally also criticizes market socialists for believing in the possibility of fair markets based on equal exchanges to be achieved by purging parasitical elements from the market economy such as private ownership of the means of production. McNally argues that market socialism is an oxymoron when socialism is defined as an end to wage-based labor.