In response to Rhon Baiman: 1) Social division of labor: agreed that this is important for socialism. But can't a substantial measure of social control over the division of labor be handled *directly* and decentrally via workers' self-management, and *indirectly* and centrally via investment planning--eg. subsidized credit allocation for firms that innovatively deploy workers in a variety of supervisory and menial tasks--and *directly* and centrally by prescribing appropriate employment policies in the central and local government sectors, as well as prescribing suitable labor laws for the worker-controlled sector (mandating various kinds of interaction in the workplace, etc)? 2) Labels: Schweickart himself terms his model 'economic democracy', not 'market socialism'. I think he recognizes the many limitations of markets, particularly as regards the volatility of market determination of investment, the effects of advertizing and sales manipulation, and the need for a large, non-market sector of public services in areas like health-care, education, social services, public transport, public recreational spaces, etc. 3) Social pricing and externalities: how does one calculate the externality component of a price if one doesn't also know its non-externality component? And how does one know the latter in the generalized absence of factor and other markets? This is the old problem of trying to calculate abstract labor values in advance of prices. Unless you pay *some* regard to the pattern of monetarily effective demand for various types of concrete labor--adjustments via the tax and transfer systems can still be employed 'ex post' to reach socially desirable goals--then a damaging degree of under- and over-supply of different types of concrete labor seems likely to result. The externalities associated with *this* kind of misallocation of resources have in fact been greater historically than those associated with markets. Or at least, societies experiencing these types of misallocations have found it difficult to survive let alone flourish Practically the whole of the former Communist bloc countries suffered severe economic and political collapses, which is why they are *now* being subjected to the most inhumane and insane efforts at radical marketization. Handing the task of overall resource allocation to even a democratically accountable body of professional planners will not work if the planners themselves do not have good information about the pattern of demand which would flow from a distribution of income reflecting individually chosen labor contributions (though not property ownership). Once this pattern is known, then further adjustments can of course be made via tax and transfer payments, selective price controls, and enhanced investment "in human beings" so as to improve the prospects of those who currently are disadvantaged in the labor market. But trying to calculate all these matters in advance of individual choices being registered in some way strikes me as a recipe for alienation on the massive scale witnessed historically under Communism. The alternative more-tolerant-markets approach is I think is also favoured on political grounds. People in advanced capitalist countries have some experience of social democratic methods of economic and social management, and retain at least some vestigial faith in them. I think it is a much more feasible task politically to ally traditional social democratic models of societal governance with new (democratic socialist) calls for worker self-management and social ownership of capital, than it is to propose an entirely new mechanism of social choice which will inevitably be associated in popular consciousness with the disastrous reputation of Soviet-style central planning, however much one tries to avoid that association. Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED]
