Robin, Peter, Justin, et. al., I wanted to get to the end of this thread before putting in my own two bits. 1) Aside from the issues raised there is a substantial difference between Schweickart and Devine on the issue of "the social division of labor" which Schweickart hardly addresses but which is very important to Devine (and Hahnel and Albert) and does reflect a critical weakness of "market socialism" which does after all make "individual choice" an operative principle at least for static allcoation of goods and labor - thus the relevance of Robin's point about the Tyrany of the Educated under market socialism. 2) Labels are important (note Justine's recent literary citation) i.e. as a political principle I think it is a grave mistake for socialists to call their vison "market-something" - thus though I like David Schweickart's book a lot esp as an introduction to a serious critique of cap. of non-political economy readers- with caveats as noted above - as at least he sees a need for investment planning. His willingness to call it a form of Market-socialism is a weakness - though I'm not sure that he uses this phrase in the book itself. 3) I lean toward a David Laibman's (see Science and Society, Sp. 1992) more democratically centrally and decentrally planned model with social pricing as well as financial planning, with attention to the social division of Labor a la Devine and Hahnel and Albert. It seems to me that critics of planning (I've had several go arounds with David Belkin on this in Socialist Forum) forget that the alternative is Markets i.e. the rule of those who need resources the least, or about the worst kind of planned allocation one can think of. David L's model also posits a makt soc and possibly a private sector for smaller and very small enterprizes (much like China now perhaps). 4) It seems to me that the issue is one of individual versus social choice and of the magnitude of externalities. Now of course there are numerous issues and problems associated with constructing forms of accountable, efficient, and democratic social choice. But there is no getting around the need for social choice itself - in part that's what socialism is all about. You can't just reduce these to individual choices (or in Devine's words "sectional" choices) - The downside of allowing markets decide will in most of these cases be far more severe than even an inaddequate mechanism of social choice. Of course this would have to be shown on a case by case basis - and for that reason it would make sense to start with major sectors with huge externalities (Autos, finance, international trade, etc) and gradually develop systems (of dmeocratic social choice) which do work. In a panel with David Schweickart (at the Midwest Radical Scholars and Sctivists a couple years agao) , it was clear to me that this was our key difference. Unlike David S., (and like H&A, Devine, and Laibman) I believe that Externlities are pervasive (and likely to get more so as economy becomes more and more "networked" and interdependent - see Harrison Lean and Meand and note Microsoft) so one can't just address "financial" planning. Democratic social choice will require social pricing and other forms of planning in goods and labor markets - particulary if the goal is human development. 5) Also increased investment in human resources will require prices with much higher mark-ups on Human capital (which gets more important in more advanced ecomies) so that investment in human services, education, cutlure, research, etc. is not a side-bar to commodity production and production pricing. This is a long-term convivial growth issue which transcends static allocation issues (which i am working on showing that market pricing is grossly sub-optimal even in static stiuations). See David L.'s book VALUE TECHNICAL CHANGE AND CRISES m.e.sHARPE, 1992, aNDREAS bRODY, FOR more on this. Shifting to this kind of pricing by the way, which puts people instead of commodities and capital at center of the pricing system, asymtotes to labor value pricing. So in summary, I think a serioius look at the political economics involved - and not just the politics and philosophy - ultimately points to serious planning - i.e. not just investment planning. 6) Regarding the issue of meetings etc., I'm sympathetic with the problems raised by Folbre (and Beckett or Oscar Wilde?) of too many meetings so often a problem in non-profits. But the issue here I think is voluntary versus paid professional work. Any large organization (especially large corporations) have lots of meetings, but between highly paid people who specialize in the topics at hand. My conclusion is that there is no getting around paid and professional planning - and professional elected public officials - to make the nitty gritty decisions subject to broadly debated programs and priorities. Its just like what we have now except no public accountability (for CEOs), but it would go beyond this to look at whole markets and industries as in Devine's Negotiated Coordinating Committees. This is getting too long - hope its useful. In Pen-l Solidarity, Ron Baiman Dept. Of Econ. Roosevelt Univ. Chicago