Market Socialism [antikvár]

After Labour's defeat in the 1983 General Election-the second defeat in a row-the Fabian Society called together a group of sympathetic academics and others to a meeting to discuss what had gone wrong. At that meeting Julián Le Grand and Raymond Plánt argued that perhaps the major current problem faced by the Left, including the Labour Party, was its loss of an intellectual base. Many of the traditional socialist forms of economic organization-such as central planning or nationalization-were widely perceived as failures; even collectivist values were discredited. The Left was no longer in the vanguard of intellectual radicalism; rather it was the so-called New Right that was producing radical ideas for social reform and change, ideas to which the Left could only respond with a limp defence of the status quo. What was needed was nothing less than a rethink of socialism: a re-evaluation of its basic tenets and a reconstruction of its philosophical and economic foundations. After the meeting Julián Le Grand wrote to the then General Secretary of the Fabian Society, Ian Martin, to suggest that a group be set up to meet on a regular basis and to begin rethinking and reconstructing socialist ideas. There was an enthusiastic response to the idea, and the Socialist Philosophy Group was set up by the Fabian Society under the joint convenorship of Le Grand, Martin, and Plánt. At the first meeting of the Group, Dávid Miller presented a paper on markét socialism. This aroused considerable interest, and the topic förmed the basis of many subsequent discussions in the Group. During the course of those discussions it becaine apparent that several of the Group's members had a common interest in the ideas grouped under the umbrella of markét socialism-ideas that seemed to be worthy of further development and of dissemination to a wider audience. This book is the result.