We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2008
Professor Arnold's reply to my reply seems not to have touched the substance of my argument. Perhaps I have been unclear. Arnold contends that any form of market socialism, if unchecked by central authorities, would revert to a system essentially undistinguishable from capitalism. Against this contention I have argued that a democratic, worker-controlled, market socialism that generates its investment fund by taxation exhibits no such tendency. Specifically, I argued that in such a society
1. there exists no tendency for socialized property to revert to private property (since workers have no incentive to sell off their firms to private individuals);
2. the ability of private individuals to accumulate vast wealth is sharply curtailed (since interest and stock income are absent);
3. the authority structures within enterprises are much more democratic than under capitalism;
4. intra-firm income differentials will be far more egalitarian than under capitalism.
