In an earlier post, a contributor claimed;
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In my opinion, the market has no businuss in a socialist system in any shape or form. Normally I avoid sectarian arguements, but I must say that any attempts at creating market socialism is pure revisionism. We should strive to advance socialism, not make socialism more like capitalism.
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There are many issues here. Firstly capitalism does not need a free market to extract surplus value from a proletariat.
Also a free market appears to be the only way society can truely determine the amount of 'socially necessary labour' that should participate in production of any particular commodity.
In fact I see no necessary link between a 'free market' and economic classes. Capitalism actually destroys any free market, destroys small non-capitalist producers and surrenders the whole economy to oligopoly and eventually, monopoly.
There are clear problems with basing socialism on a market mechanism, because embryonic capitalists can always lie and manipulate a free market by misrepresenting their cost structures. This means that a market cannot be all determining and the only means of determining exchange value.
We need some form of 'mixed' economy - planned and market, without capitalism.
These are complex issues that need to be explored, and I do not think people should be too concerned about 'revisionism'.
With best wishes
Chris Warren
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