Market, State, and Community

Abstract
Offers a theoretical defence of market socialism, a third way between traditional capitalism and traditional socialism, which combines a market economy with social control of capital and employee control of workplaces. The first part offers a critique of the libertarian philosophy used to defend free‐market capitalism, focussing on the issues of freedom, justice, the neutrality of markets, and private charity as an alternative to the welfare state. The second part defends markets against socialist criticism. Here it is shown that consumers are generally the best judges of their own welfare, that people can deserve their market receipts, that exploitation is not an inherent feature of market transactions, and that alienation can be overcome provided the market is subject to political control. The third part develops a model of the socialist state, defending the ideas of national community as a basis of citizenship, of politics as a form of dialogue between citizens, of the integration of cultural minorities into an encompassing community, and of constitutional limits on majority rule. The book concludes by defending the political relevance of the system outlined in previous chapters.

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