Market socialism in retrospect

Contemporary Politics, Volume 12, Number 1, March 2006 Market socialism in retrospect SIMON GRIFFITHS London School of Economics I began in the 1970s with fairly ill-defined socialist beliefs that seemed naturally to entail an antipathy to markets as a means of economic coordination, a point of view which is I suppose fairly common. I was shaken out of it by encountering, in the middle part of that decade, various libertarian writings that set out polemically, but still powerfully the arguments in favour of markets. These arguments left me with two basic convictions. One was that the libertarian position in itself—the belief in a minimal state and economic laissez faire—was ill founded and untenable. The other was that the pro-market arguments found in libertarian writings were none the less strong in themselves and deserve to convince socialists.1 ‘Socialism’, wrote Friedrich Hayek, is in its methods concerned with ‘the abolition of private enterprise, of private ownership of the means of production, and the creation of a system of “planned economy” in which the entrepreneur working for profit is replaced by a central planning body.’2 Hayek’s description of socialism, written in 1944, was largely uncontroversial. The connection between socialism and economic planning was generally taken for granted across the political spectrum for much of the twentieth century.3 Nevertheless, within 40 years of Hayek’s account, several writers on the left of British politics had begun to debate the possibility of combining socialism with the unplanned economics of the market—arguments more commonly associated with economic liberals, conservatives and the New Right, than with socialists. The attempt to combine markets with socialism achieved its most explicit support in the UK in the late eighties and early nineties, with the revival of ‘market socialism’, a theory which, defined generally, sought to combine social ownership of the means of production with the extensive use of market mechanisms in the economy.4 By the mid-nineties the concept was much discussed in academia and in think tanks on the left of British politics. A decade later the term ‘market socialism’ is seldom heard. This article offers an explanation for the rise and fall of market socialism in the UK during the final decade of the twentieth century, and examines how the concept compares with older political traditions, particularly more mainstream forms of socialism. I examine the concept through focusing on the work of one of its principal advocates: David Miller—currently Professor of Political Theory at Nuffield College, Oxford. From the mid-seventies until the mid-nineties Miller carefully constructed and ISSN 1356-9775 print=ISSN 1469-3631 online/06=010025-20 DOI: 10.1080=13569770600704930 # 2006 Taylor & Francis 26 Simon Griffiths sustained a case for market socialism, in particular through his participation in groups associated with the Labour Party, through the publication of a book on the subject and in a series of articles.5 This article examines the changing contexts that led to the rise and fall of market socialism and the significance of the concept for the recent history of political thought in the UK. As such, it is not concerned primarily with whether the normative arguments for market socialism can be successfully applied.6 The paper begins with a discussion of the shifting historical context behind the rise of market socialism in the late eighties. In the second section I examine the concept of market socialism itself in more detail, focusing on Miller’s own arguments. The final section compares market socialism with more mainstream forms of twentieth century socialist thought. I conclude by discussing the decline of market socialism, and argue that the significance of the concept lies in its challenge to the conventional categorization of political thought into socialist, liberal and conservative traditions—a categorization which dominated the twentieth century, but which crumbled during its final years. The article avoids a simple essentialist view of what commitments, aspirations or values constitute socialism.7 To begin with the view that markets and socialism are essentially incompatible, which many writers have taken, is unhelpful.8 Simple essentialist approaches neglect the complexity of political traditions, their overlapping nature and the diversity of ways in which the ideas, aspirations, values and aversions which compose them are prioritized within each tradition and relate to one another. In an early article on market socialism David Miller wrote: ‘I do not believe that essentialist definitions of socialism are particularly helpful. Socialists are committed to the abolition of capitalism, but beyond that minimal commitment socialism stands for a diverse bundle of aspirations and ideals, together with institutional proposals intended to realise those aspirations and ideals.’9 Even Miller’s ‘minimal commitment’ can now be seen as essentialist and contestable; reflecting his understanding of the essence of socialism at that time and claiming a greater commitment for socialists than many have themselves made. This paper avoids simple essentialism and focuses on the major discontinuities and continuities that the adoption of markets caused socialist thought. Changing contexts As the epigraph to this article shows, Miller dates his engagement with promarket arguments to the mid-seventies. In this section I discuss the contextual shifts around this time that made possible the engagement of some on the left with pro-market arguments. I focus, in particular, on how Miller and other market socialists perceived the context to be changing. The limits of statist socialism The revival of market socialism should be seen, in part, as a response to the increasingly widespread perception on the left during the post-war period that statist forms of socialism have failed. These failures included the authoritarianism and collapse of the Soviet Union, the perceived difficulties of Keynesian social democracy in the UK (and elsewhere) and the loss of four consecutive general elections by the British Labour Party between 1979 and 1997. Market socialism in retrospect 27 Miller is clear in his assessment that statist forms of socialism have failed and that socialism needed to cast itself free from its association with state planning. He notes that ‘Socialism is no longer an unsullied idea; faute de mieux, people will identify it with the unattractive form of statism that has emerged over the last half-century in Eastern Europe’.10 Similarly, contributors to Estrin and Le Grand’s book on market socialism, Saul Estrin and David Winter, note explicitly that the case for market socialism rests on more than just the attractiveness of arguments in favour of markets; it also rests on the failure of the principal alternative: central planning.11 To Miller, there are several reasons for the failure of central planning. The first of these is straightforwardly about the means or effectiveness of statist socialism, although it derives from placing value on consumer demands—a concern more prevalent on the left in the final years of the twentieth century than at its midpoint. Miller argues that ‘planned production is unable to respond as quickly and flexibly to consumers’ preferences as a market’, creating problems in the day-to-day production of consumer goods for state socialist systems. Miller’s remaining arguments are all more or less normative. His second argument is that ‘central planning negates democracy’ through the creation of a large professional bureaucracy in which power gravitates to those with specialist knowledge. Miller’s third argument is that ‘central planning severely restricts the scope for workers’ self-management’ as decisions over production of goods and services are transferred to a central authority. This concern, regarding the undemocratic nature of socialist bureaucracy, was by the late eighties more commonly associated with the right than the left; although democratic, anticentralizing arguments provide an undercurrent in left-wing argument which runs through the works of William Morris, G. D. H. Cole and the Guild Socialists, to the post-war New Left and beyond. Finally, Miller argues that in any state socialist system ‘freedom to change employment will be circumscribed’ as workers’ choices are limited to those jobs that planners make available.12 The failings of a planned economy in the Soviet Union marked the end of the major non-capitalist alternative. The USSR had acted as a guiding star for the British left in the middle decades of the twentieth century from which they were able to find their own (often very different) positions. For example, whereas in the thirties and forties George Orwell’s socialism was, at least in part, an argument against the totalitarianism of the USSR, Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s socialism was increasingly based on respect for its orderliness. The point here is that both Orwell and the Webbs used the Soviet Union as a base from which to shape their own versions of socialism.13 The work of Miller and other market socialists after 1989 no longer has the USSR as an example of actually existing socialism to guide it and is part of a much wider re-examination of first principles occurring amongst the left in Britain and beyond in the post-Soviet world. Miller is also candid in his rejection of Keynesian social democracy as a successful vehicle to move towards a socialist society. Writing in 1989 he argued, first, that ‘it is no longer clear that Keynesian methods can be used in the desired manner to secure full employment’. Miller does not make the argument common on the centre and left by the nineties that the possibility of pursuing Keynesian policies to achieve full employment is increasingly limited in a globalizing economy.14 Perhaps because Miller’s arguments for market socialism grew out of debates over the future of the British Labour Party, they are generally 28 Simon Griffiths presented as solutions at the national level, with little reference to the international context. Second, Miller notes that ‘there is substantial evidence that the impact of fiscal measures on the overall distribution on income and wealth has so far been quite limited’. In evidence he cites research which shows that in 1985 the top 10% of British households enjoyed post-tax incomes some ten times greater than those of the bottom 10%.15 Last, Miller argues that the welfare state, although successful as a means of tackling poverty, ‘has been far less successful as a vehicle for overall equality [because] freely provided services . . . may be used more effectively by those who are already better off to an extent that eliminates . . . the progressive element in their funding through income tax’.16 This argument has continued relevance in contemporary debates over Labour’s ‘choice’ agenda.17 Sceptics have expressed concern that those with greater social, economic, cultural or symbolic capital are able to take advantage of welfare choices in a way that others are not.18 Although Miller’s argument touches on these issues, he never explicitly examines the sociological challenges surrounding the ability to choose that follows from it. Related to limits of Keynesian social democracy, at least in the mind of Miller and other market socialists, was the party political failure for the British Labour Party. The Labour Party lost four consecutive general elections after 1979 and was out of office for over 17 years. In their collection on market socialism19 (which includes a contribution from Miller), Estrin and Le Grand describe how their book originated as a specific response to Labour’s loss of the 1983 general election. The authors describe how the Fabian Society called together a group of sympathetic academics and others to describe what had ‘gone wrong’. It was agreed that the group would meet on a regular basis under the name of the ‘Socialist Philosophy Group’ to begin ‘rethinking and reconstructing’ socialist ideas.20 At the first meeting of the group David Miller presented a paper on market socialism, discussions of which formed the basis for several subsequent meetings. It is reasonable to suggest that the electoral failure of the Labour Party in the UK affected the wider British left in a way that that has no equivalent in the multi-party electoral systems of Continental Europe. Britain’s two-party system meant that the Labour Party acted as the focus for the aspirations of a broad and disparate left for most of the twentieth century.21 For example, the post-war Labour Party was the focus of aspirations for both fellow-travelling communists and moderate social democrats. During the post-war period, European multi-party systems did not provide a single focus for a broader national left in the way that the British system did, and consequently the electoral failure of any one Continental left-wing party did not have ramifications for the wider left as it did in Britain. In the UK, Labour’s loss of four consecutive general elections caused a particularly wide and far-reaching crisis on the British left not mirrored to the same extent elsewhere, and played a role in explaining the rise of radical solutions, such as market socialism, during the late eighties. The resurgence of political theory and the rise of the New Right If Miller, and other market socialists, were responding to what they saw as the multi-levelled failure of statist forms of socialism, they were also writing in a Market socialism in retrospect 29 changing intellectual environment. In particular, Miller’s market socialism was a response to two overlapping intellectual shifts that gathered momentum in political thought from the seventies onwards: the resurgence of political theory, and the emergence of various pro-market arguments which came together under the heading of the ‘New Right’. ‘The resurgence of political theory’ changed the way in which politics was studied, especially in the anglophone countries.22 In particular, the publication of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice in 1971 focused debate on normative political liberalism.23 For Miller, this resurgence ‘prompts a reexamination of socialist attitudes towards the market’.24 Writers at the centre of this resurgence, such as Rawls and Robert Nozick,25 provided an account of justice which was compatible with market institutions. Miller points out that Rawls and Nozick both tried to forestall criticism from socialists by arguing that ‘fundamental socialist values can be realised through a suitably ordered market’.26 For Rawls, a market society in which his two principles of justice are operational could meet many socialist aspirations.27 For Nozick, socialist values such as workers’ control and freedom from alienating forms of work could be achieved by voluntary means through the market itself. Miller himself has been engaged constantly with this resurgence in political theory: first, in his teaching as a professor of political theory; and, second, through his published work, which includes several communitarian responses to individualism in political theory.28 Miller’s writing is shaped through these debates with political liberals. The rise of various, sustained, libertarian arguments grouped together under the heading of the ‘New Right’29 also changed the environment within which political discourse was conducted. Although the term, ‘New Right’ was coined in 1968,30 the full force of this ‘counter-revolution’31 was not felt in the UK until the election of a Conservative government headed by Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Writing ten years after Thatcher became prime minister; Miller noted the intellectual shift that the rise of the New Right had entailed: The cause of the libertarian Right . . . has been aided by such works of undoubted intellectual power as Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia. Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty, and Oakeshott’s, On Human Conduct, all published within a short space of time in the middle 1970s. Even if one is critical of the positions taken in these books, there is no escaping the fact that they do advance arguments of a suitably basic kind for a libertarian position in politics. They need to be taken seriously as political theory . . .32 An admission of this kind was rare on the left in Britain for much of the post-war period; by making it in 1989 Miller demonstrated the extent to which a re-examination of first principles was occurring for socialists. Furthermore, in making a statement about the intellectual challenge of thinkers whose work came to be associated with the New Right, Miller’s account of change is significantly different from that given by many earlier socialists. Many political thinkers on the left had put forward an account of politics and ideology which drew on Marxism, in which arguments were seen as deriving from and serving the interests of the class location of those who advanced them. The response of socialists writing in the Marxist tradition to arguments from Nozick, Hayek or Oakeshott in favour of private property or the market 30 Simon Griffiths was to criticize the interests that those arguments were taken to promote, and the values and aspirations for which they were instrumental. If this Marxian view of political argument is held it is difficult to give an argument for the market serious attention in its own right. Miller’s understanding of political argument marks a break with the Marxist tradition. It depends on a worldview in which, although it may interact with it, political thinking is neither dependent on nor merely derived from other forms of social life. The result of the shifts discussed in the previous sections—the limits of statist forms of socialism, the resurgence of political theory and the rise of the New Right—shook the foundations of socialism as it had been understood for much of the past century, as Estrin and Le Grand wrote in their collection on market socialism: What was needed was nothing less than a rethink of socialism: a reevaluation of its basic tenets and a reconstruction of its philosophical and economic foundations.33 The ‘revival’ of market socialism, which is examined below, can only be understood against this changing context and was just one attempt of many to revive the left in Britain in the last decades of the twentieth century. The revival of market socialism It is quite possible to be for markets and against capitalism . . .34 The origins of the market socialist revival of the late eighties and early nineties are found in earlier debates regarding the role of the market in socialism; debates which for much of the twentieth century occurred outside of the mainstream British political tradition. In this section I briefly discuss earlier iterations of the concept, before examining David Miller’s account in more detail. Earlier accounts ‘Market socialism’ (or concepts very close to it) has undergone several revivals since the late nineteenth century, but has only ever been a minor part of socialist thought in the UK. It is possible to identify four broad recurrences of interest.35 In the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill proposed an early form of what John Gray described as market socialism.36 Mill’s proposals were based on ownership and control of firms by workers and on a wider redistribution of income and wealth in society. A second and major recurrence of the term was associated with the economist Oskar Lange in the thirties. Lange’s work produced a revival of market socialism following the ‘Calculation Debate’, which concerned the question of whether successful economic planning was possible without the knowledge transmitted by market pricing that allowed for the rational calculation of costs.37 Lange’s market socialism contained a much greater role for the state than envisaged by later market socialists, such as Miller, with a Central Planning Board still setting prices for capital goods and productive resources outside of labour and the state still possessing exclusive control of firms. A third wave of market socialism was found in the Balkans after 1950. Market socialism in former Yugoslavia grew out of Marshal Tito’s split with Stalin, which Market socialism in retrospect 31 resulted in the state’s expulsion from Comintern in 1948 and the subsequent Soviet blockade. Yugoslavian market socialism involved large-scale economic decentralization to workers’ collectives that produced, bought or sold most capital goods and owned the residual net profits which they then allocated between wages and investment.38 Several other East European states made moves away from more dirigiste forms of socialism to incorporate the market to varying degrees during the post-war period. The term is now also used to describe the marketization of the Chinese economy initiated by Deng Xiaoping after 1978.39 It is the fourth wave of market socialism that provides the focus for this paper. It was found in the theoretical expositions put forward by several thinkers in Britain and the USA in the decades during and after the collapse of communism in eastern Europe. There are several, often quite different, variations of this argument. Important contributions were made by Joseph Carens, Alec Nove, Christopher Pierson, and by the American political scientist John Roemer.40 As Miller and Estrin pointed out, perhaps the only ‘community of view’ amongst those describing themselves as market socialists was the shared belief that ‘markets are not automatically to be identified with capitalist markets’.41 David Miller’s market socialism One of the earliest, most sustained, and best developed accounts of market socialism in the UK during this revival came from David Miller.42 It is for these reasons that Miller’s work was selected for more detailed examination throughout this paper. In this section I examine Miller’s argument for the market and for market socialism in more detail. There are several levels of argument for the market in Miller’s thought. First, Miller argues that the market has epistemological advantages over rival systems. Miller sums up his acceptance of the epistemological argument concisely: Markets serve simultaneously as information systems and as incentive systems. The price mechanism signals to the suppliers of goods what the relative demand is for different product lines, while at the same time giving them an incentive, in the form of potentially increased profits, to switch into lines where demand is currently high in relation to supply. These two functions [information and incentive] are separable, a point worth underlining.43 The argument that markets act as ‘signals’ between consumers and producers approximating supply with demand was most often associated with the right.44 Below, in the section on ‘the significance of market socialism’, I argue that the ramifications of such an argument mean that it cannot be incorporated unproblematically into the wider socialist tradition. At a second level Miller also argues that markets provide a structure within which free choices can be made. ‘Freedom’, Miller claims, ‘as a value has recently returned to prominence on the Left’,45 and he places this value at the centre of his argument. Miller is explicit that ‘[f]reedom is valuable precisely because of the possibility that people may make radically different choices about how they want to live their lives’46. He argues that markets allow several liberties that planned systems do not. First, markets allow freedom of choice over 32 Simon Griffiths purchases—dinner jackets or denim, opera or pop; the market allows people to ‘define their own social identities . . . Nobody wants to have to justify choices of this kind to some public agency.’47 Miller argues that markets provide a second important freedom: choice of when and where to work (though this choice is obviously limited by availability. This is an argument most famously made by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom (1944) rather than on the left.48 A final freedom which markets allow, according to Miller, is freedom of expression: the market allows political protest through providing resources to propagate views counter to those of the state. There is a tension here with left-wing ‘political economy’ views of the media which argue that freedom of expression is often stifled in a (capitalist) market society.49 Miller’s claim that markets are linked to freedom of expression is also found in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which cites Trotsky on this point: In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.50 A third level of argument that Miller cites in favour of markets is the close association between it and democracy. For Miller, the market economy allows industrial forms of democracy in a way that a state-run economy does not, because members of each enterprise in a market have substantial autonomy to control their work environment. They have a say, for example, in what, how much, where, how and when goods are produced. In a planned economy, on the other hand, targets are given from above. Markets also allow for democracy in decision making, in a way that state-run economies do not. At its simplest, market socialism decentralizes the decision-making process. In Miller’s model, decisions are not made by an elite group of state bureaucrats but within each co-operative. For Miller, market socialism is an attempt to come to terms with the defects found in the statist models and to take advantage of the benefits of the market. Miller lays out his model of market socialism in some detail. The ‘key idea is that the market mechanisation is retained as a means of providing most goods and services, while ownership is socialised’.51 Social ownership is to be contrasted with both state ownership and private ownership—both of which can be described as forms of ‘exclusive ownership’. Social ownership aims at largescale ownership in common—as exemplified in the co-operative. In his book Market, State and Community, Miller sketches his model of market socialism concisely enough to quote in full: [A]ll productive enterprises are constituted as workers’ co-operatives, leasing their operating capital from an outside investment agency. Each enterprise makes its own decisions about products, methods of production, prices etc., and competes for custom in the market. Net profits form a pool out of which incomes are paid. Each enterprise is democratically controlled by those who work for it, and among the issues they must decide is how to distribute income within the co-operative.52 Miller’s market socialism had two egalitarian elements: first, it was an attempt to reduce income differentials to a fraction of what they were under capitalism and, second, it would provide income supplements, in cash or kind, to those in need.53 Miller is keen to stress that the first element does not depend on the idea of equal Market socialism in retrospect 33 allocation, an idea which, he argues, is unpopular. Miller’s theory of distributive justice is based largely on desert, which he argues is mirrored in popular understandings of the concept. (This marks an obvious break with needs-based conceptions, such as those derived from Marxism.) If a just system is one which rewards according to desert, then there is a degree of inequality admitted under market socialism, which is, for Miller, compatible with justice. Primary income is determined largely by the market, but Miller argues that the market must be framed in such as way as to ensure that incomes bear a close relation to effort and ability, and, therefore, Miller claims, income differentials will be far narrower under market socialism than under capitalism. The second egalitarian element in Miller’s market socialism is based on need. Miller wants a shift from the current system, where welfare is often presented as a kind of ‘collective charity’, to a socialist conception where welfare is a right, owed as a matter of distributive justice and claimed free from stigma. A practical condition of the shift towards welfare rights, Miller argues, is a ‘strengthening of communal ties’.54 The importance Miller places in community puts his market socialism outside mainstream socialist thought in the UK, as I argue in the next section. The significance of the revival How should this revival of market socialism be judged against the wider political landscape? At the outside, there seems to be two possible interpretations. First, late twentieth century British market socialism could be seen as merely part of ‘the revisionary socialist project’55—as Miller suggests at some points in his work. In the UK this tradition stretches back to Anthony Crosland and perhaps further.56 Revisionism was, above all else, a criticism of the effectiveness or necessity of traditional economic socialism as a means of running a successful economy. A second view interprets market socialism as something more radical, a concept alien to the socialist tradition. Under this interpretation market socialism involves a post-Hayekian suspicion that there is no defensible basis for publicly articulated and applied collective values. At some points this seems closer to Miller’s argument. Market socialism is presented as a ‘radical redefinition of the meaning of socialism’ and an ‘alternative’ to other forms of socialism which are described as ‘outmoded’.57 In this section I examine the place of market socialism in the broader traditions of British political thought in the twentieth century, by looking at some of the major discontinuities between market socialism and the more statist forms of socialism that dominated the twentieth century. In particular, I focus on how Miller’s arguments for the market rely on themes found either submerged by mainstream twentieth-century socialism or found as part of non-socialist traditions. I begin with an account of freedom in market socialism and how it contrasts with many earlier socialist accounts. Market freedoms and their ramifications Miller’s account of freedom challenges older socialist traditions; it is explicitly the freedom of a market society: ‘Individual freedom is enshrined in consumer choice, and in workers’ rights to move in and out of enterprises.’58 At his most candid 34 Simon Griffiths Miller admits how radically the acceptance of market freedoms affects the socialist argument. At one point Miller identifies ‘two strands in the socialist critique of capitalism’.59 The first element of this critique focuses on the ‘distributive inadequacies of capitalism’. The argument is that capitalism distributes resources, freedom and power in a way that is grossly unfair. (This argument is found in Marx’s theory of exploitation—the claim that under capitalism the surplus value created by the labour of the worker is systematically expropriated by the capitalists.) This critique leads to an argument for distributive justice in most socialist thought. The second element of the socialist critique of capitalism concerns the ‘quality of life’ in capitalist society. This is a broad critique which includes the accusation that capitalism produces for profit and not for use and therefore fails to provide people with what they really need, that capitalism stifles creativity and that it fosters competitive, rather than co-operative, human relations. (This line of argument is found in Marx’s theory of alienation.) Together, Miller argues, these claims ‘add up to the thesis that capitalism does not and cannot provide the good life for man’. He continues: No matter how radically resources are redistributed, activity in a market must be governed by instrumental rationality, people must behave nontuistically (that is, each must aim to maximise his holdings, regardless of the welfare of his partners in exchange), and so forth. The ‘quality of life’ critique seems therefore inevitably to point beyond markets . . .60 Miller’s acceptance of the market, and with it the freedoms necessary to drive a market society, leads him to conclude that ‘if we want a feasible form of socialism, it seems that we have to accept a major role for markets, and that to that extent, we must abandon the “quality of life” critique’, which ‘requires us to judge some modes of human life as better than others, regardless of the preferences the people actually display’.61 In jettisoning much of the ‘quality of life critique’ of capitalism, Miller breaks with a substantial tradition in twentieth-century socialist and social democratic thought. Socialist argument often contained a moral critique of some of the freely made choices that individuals make in the market.62 A market may well be the most efficient means of co-ordinating the myriad of economic decisions and embody certain freedoms, but twentieth-century socialists and social democrats often rejected some of these individual choices as freedoms at all.63 To other socialists, particularly the early Fabians, ‘freedom’ was never central to their argument, as it is with Miller, and the concept was rarely discussed. Their focus was on efficient organization as a means of securing and promoting a collective well-being whose character was assumed to be non-contentious. H. G. Wells wrote that ‘the fundamental idea on which Socialism rests is the same fundamental idea as that which all real successful scientific work is carried on . . . It is an assertion that things are in their nature orderly, that things may be computed, maybe calculated upon and foreseen.’64 Similarly, G. K. Chesterton derided Wells’ fellow Fabian, George Bernard Shaw, for viewing modern society as an ‘untidy room’.65 The implication of Chesterton’s jibe was that socialists were more interested in order and tidiness than the messier value of freedom. Despite the moral Puritanism of the early Fabians, and others, there has always been a libertarian current, or at least undercurrent, to socialism.66 It can be seen in different ways in the works of William Morris, the Guild Socialists, Market socialism in retrospect 35 George Orwell, Anthony Crosland and the New Left. Orwell sums this current up when he writes approvingly of the English belief in the ‘liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above’.67 Yet, although it was often closer to anarchism than statist-socialism, even this libertarian undercurrent did not make the link between freedom and the market as explicitly as Miller and the market socialists did. The decline of paternalism If, as I have argued above, Miller’s acceptance of the market entails an acceptance of freedoms of the kind socialists would not traditionally have valued, it also means the rejection of a particular kind of state paternalism. This paternalism is most associated with the Fabian tradition in socialist thought, which was often sceptical of the rationality of the ‘average sensual man’.68 The paternalist theme in Fabian thought was most bluntly stated by post-war Labour Minister Douglas Jay, when he wrote that ‘in the case of nutrition and health, just as in the case of education, the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves’.69 The acceptance of the forms of knowledge that underlie the market means, to a much greater degree, the rejection of a strand of thinking that allowed the state moral or paternalistic grounds to intervene in an individual’s own choices. Acceptance amongst market socialists of other individuals’ choices—quirky or strange as they may seem—both for normative reasons and because individual choice is required for markets to work, is also part of an often submerged theme in left-wing thought: the idea that people should make their own choices and that it is not the job of the authorities to tell them what to do. Rodney Barker summed this current up, noting that a resentment of paternalism . . . had always been a recessive theme of the left. Socialism for ordinary people, George Orwell had written in The Road to Wigan Pier, meant amongst other things ‘nobody bossing you about’ . . . whilst a theme of the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s had been a suspicion of orthodoxy and a revolt against gerontocracy.70 Furthermore, as Miller claimed above, advocating markets meant a dispersal of power, as a degree of decision making was taken from the state and given to individuals and (co-operative) groups. The return of pluralism Miller’s market socialism marks an acceptance that the state is not morally and economically sovereign. He describes both his system and its justifying theory as ‘radically pluralistic’.71 The non-statist pluralism that is a part of Miller’s market socialism was more often found in the nineteenth and twentieth century amongst anarchist and liberal thinkers. As with libertarianism and the rejection of paternalism, scepticism about the state has also been an undercurrent in socialist thought. It was found in the period before the turn of the twentieth century, for example, in Joseph Lane’s Anti-statist Communist Manifesto 72 and in the work of 36 Simon Griffiths William Morris. Morris made the argument for non-statist forms of socialism explicitly, arguing that: [I]t is necessary to point out that there are some Socialists who do not think that the problem of the organisation of life and necessary labour can be dealt with by a huge national centralisation, working by a kind of magic for which no one feels himself responsible; that on the contrary it will be necessary for the unit of administration to be small enough for every citizen to feel himself responsible for its details, and be interested in them; that individual men cannot shuffle off the business of life on to the shoulders of an abstraction called the State, but must deal with it in conscious association with each other.73 Yet for much of the twentieth century socialists and social democrats aimed to achieve their goals through the apparatus of the state. This largely unquestioned statism in British socialist thought explains why the revisionist socialist, Anthony Crosland, felt the need to remind his fellow socialists of the contribution of Morris and others, noting that socialists ‘should recall (though they often do not) that they have anarchist blood in their veins’.74 Miller, in particular, on the British left registered this reminder. His early work reflected an interest in the communitariananarchists of the nineteenth century, particularly Peter Kropotkin.75 Miller’s argument for workers’ control within the co-operative straddles other political traditions, as well as anarchism. If mainstream socialism in the twentieth century had been statist, there is a strong strand in socialist thought which advocates pluralism and co-operation largely in terms of the ‘quality of life’ critique of socialism that Miller claims to have rejected: the argument that working together is morally desirable in its own right. This claim links Miller’s arguments for cooperatives with both the English political pluralism of the early twentieth century— most notably the guild socialism of G. D. H. Cole—and the socialist pluralism of Harold Laski.76 The argument also provides Miller’s market socialism with a radicalism, and a transformative aspiration to go beyond capitalism, seldom found in contemporary left-wing debate. Markets and community The left-wing commentator Hilary Wainwright argues that David Miller equates anti-market socialism with a ‘primitive communalism’77 desired on purely moral grounds, and cites Miller’s comment that those who support the antimarket tradition in socialism remain ‘romantically attached to a pre-industrial vision of community’.78 For Miller, she argues, such commitments among today’s socialists are an unscrutinized legacy of nineteenth-century utopianism. Wainwright’s interpretation of Miller’s argument allows parallels between his thought and that of Friedrich Hayek, who dismissed socialism as an atavistic desire for a sense of community that was lost with the evolution of the market.79 However, Miller’s actual account of community is more nuanced than Wainwright admits. His writing contains similarities with contemporary postmodern writers on nationhood, such as Andrew Pilkington.80 Miller notes the importance of enemies in the construction of communal identity, arguing that the stronger the loyalty one has to a community the stronger the animosity seems to be to those outside it. Thus socialists face a trade-off between small, Market socialism in retrospect 37 intense communities which relate to each other in non-socialist (rivalrous or hostile) ways or more inclusive communities in which the socialist elements, such as solidarity and simplicity of relationship, are diluted.81 Miller is also critical of the view held by many socialists that communal relationships must, in some way, be unitary. He traces this view to the argument of German Romantics and cites Raymond Plant’s concern that their view of community ‘involved some notion of the whole man, in which men were to be met by other men in the totality of their social roles and not in a fragmented or segmental way’.82 Miller argues that Marx, Morris or Kropotkin would not have accepted the argument of the German Romantics either, for it leaves no room for the development of individuality. The goal of Marx, Morris and Kropotkin, as Miller interprets it, is to ‘reconcile individual self-development with communal solidarity, not to extinguish the former in the name of the latter’.83 Yet in arguing for the market, which necessarily involves partial relationships as people relate to one another as buyers and sellers of goods, Miller has tipped the balance further away from community and towards the individual than did the nineteenth century thinkers whom he draws upon to support his argument. Miller’s work on community involves a further break with earlier forms of socialism. For Miller, community is crucial in the constitution of one’s sense of personal identity and in making possible the distributive arrangements that socialists support, and he argues that this sense of community can be derived from nationality.84 As Miller admits, his ‘rescue operation on behalf of nationality’85 contrasts with earlier forms of socialism, which had, in theory if not in practice, been overwhelmingly hostile to the idea of nationhood, which were associated with aggressive forms of nationalism.86 ‘Feasible’ socialism Miller sets out to develop a ‘feasible’ form of socialism that eschews earlier utopian approaches. He argues that his writing is part of an attempt ‘to recast the principle of socialism with the aim, broadly speaking, of bringing it more closely into line with the aspirations of the majority of the people (including the majority of workers) in advanced societies’.87 Miller is not alone in stressing the ‘feasibility’ of his argument for socialism at the end of the twentieth century.88 The move to less utopian and more feasible forms of socialism is part of a much longer historical shift. The failure, in the eyes of the left, of a number of socialist institutions and hopes created a wariness of earlier socialists’ visions of the future—there was a moderation of hopes. The reasons for this ‘disenchantment’89 are many, but must include, in the first place, the two world wars, which created a suspicion of grand theory and tempered the radicalism of many socialists and social democrats.90 Second, there was increasing disenchantment with the Soviet Union’s attempt at ‘actually existing socialism’. Stalin’s show trials, the Nazi –Soviet Pact, Khrushchev’s secret speech and, particularly, the crushing of the Hungarian and Czech uprisings led to increasing disenchantment with the USSR. The collapse of the Soviet Union after the revolutions of 1989 marked the end of the major alternative to capitalism. Third, in the West, there was also a series of disappointments for the left: the lack of long-term change following the student demonstrations of 1968; the electoral popularity of governments inspired by the 38 Simon Griffiths New Right in the eighties and, perhaps most importantly, disenchantment with socialist and social democratic governments once they gained power. The abandonment of a radical programme by the French Socialists in 1983 symbolized this disenchantment more than any other event.91 Conclusions Market socialism in retrospect market socialism, once thought to be a rather timid idea, is now regarded by many on the Left as dangerously radical.92 If market socialism was in vogue from the late eighties to the mid-nineties it no longer is. In retrospect, the attempt of David Miller and other market socialists to provide a popular alternative to statist socialism failed. After regularly returning to the issue of market socialism for much of the two decades from the midseventies, the interest of Miller (and many of the other main advocates of market socialism) has now waned. Figure 1 gives some indication of how the term has also fallen out of academic debate since the late nineties.93 Several reasons can be suggested for the decline of market socialism. First, in the UK market socialism failed to attract support on the left, whilst appearing too radical for those in the centre. In the early nineties the left-wing thinker Figure 1. Number of published articles with ‘market socialism’ in the abstract, title, subject or geographic heading, 1970– 2005. Source: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (accessed 7 February 2006). Market socialism in retrospect 39 G. A. Cohen dismissed market socialism as an example of ‘Adaptive Preference Formation’, by which he meant a ‘process in which, irrationally, a person comes to prefer A to B just because he believes A is available and B is not’. To Cohen, and other critics, ‘market socialism is at best second-best’. Cohen, for example, argued that market socialism is inadequate from a socialist point of view because it fails socialism’s egalitarian distributive principles, offering higher rewards to those who happen to be talented in the creation of productive cooperatives.94 If market socialism fails the distributive aims of some of the left, others would reject it on the basis of Miller’s admission that it fails the quality of life criterion of earlier socialists: as Miller admitted: ‘if we want a feasible form of socialism, it seems that we have to accept a major role for markets, and that to that extent, we must abandon the “quality of life” critique’ associated with Marx’s critique of alienation.95 Alternatively, for those on the centre ground market socialism was too radical. As ‘disenchantment’ increased during the nineties, this increasingly seemed to be the case, as Miller’s quote in the epigraph to this section shows. Whilst from the left Cohen argued that for those who supported market socialism as a feasible option ‘the grass looks greener on this side of the fence’; for people near the centre, market socialism did not appear to be on ‘this side of the fence’ at all, but many miles distant. The distance between the vision for the Labour Party laid out in Estrin and Le Grand’s Market Socialism,96 written as a specific response to the 1983 election defeat, and the policies of New Labour in office after 1997 make the radical nature of market socialism particularly clear. Market socialism offered a second-best utopia: too utopian for critics near the political centre, but an uninspiring second best for many on the left. Several former market socialists were later involved with New Labour, notably Julian Le Grand, who was appointed special adviser to Tony Blair on health in 2004.97 The distance between New Labour in the late nineties and market socialists a decade before seems large, but there is some continuity between Le Grand’s recent arguments and those found in his earlier market socialist phase.98 In all of Le Grand’s work since he edited Market Socialism in 1989 there remains an explicit argument for greater ‘choice’ and a continued support for the market as a means of delivering better services. This consistency allows a line to be drawn between the market socialism of the late eighties and early nineties and New Labour’s ‘reform and modernization’ agenda after 1997 which aims to bring increased freedom of choice for citizens dealing with the public services. Despite some continuity there is a gulf between the actual policies of New Labour in government and the aspirations of market socialists discussed in this paper. There were other reasons for market socialism’s rapid disappearance. The violent collapse of the Yugoslavian model of market socialism, discussed above, in the early nineties meant that the main ‘actually existing’ source of inspiration for market socialists catastrophically and quickly disappeared. Lastly, market socialism, only a decade from its heyday in the UK, seems curiously parochial and outdated in its concerns. Miller’s discussion of the market is largely national in its scope. Contemporary discussion of the market, especially since the rise of debates about globalization in the late nineties, tends to view the market as global (or at least regional).99 Writing before the contemporary globalization debate got under way in full force; Miller never fully faces the question of how market socialism can be attained when the powers of the state are circumscribed 40 Simon Griffiths by globalization—especially as market socialism has only ever received limited popular support. By the late nineties much of the debate on the centre and left had been refocused onto questions of how to engage with an increasingly globalized world.100 The corrosion of old categories For much of the twentieth century the traditions which dominated political discussion in the UK – socialism, conservatism and, to a lesser extent, liberalism – were relatively stable. The dominance of this taxonomy was challenged at various times, notably by feminism, at various points in the century, and by the New Right from the late sixties. By the end of the twentieth century this taxonomy had collapsed. Market socialism is not alone in challenging the old categorization, but it was a notably corrosive force in breaking down the old structures, in particular the separation between socialism and liberalism. Market socialism is no longer a significant part of contemporary political debate. If it acted as a corrosive force in breaking down the old barriers between socialism and other ideologies, it also burnt itself out. In seeking to provide a self-described socialist argument for the market, the concept clung to the categories it was itself helping to destroy. Market socialism did not fit easily into the socialist tradition: its acceptance of the market, not just for reasons of efficiency (a value for which the Fabians would have felt some affinity) but often for reasons related to individual freedom, contained ramifications that challenged some of the central themes of earlier socialism. Miller’s model of market socialism, through supporting freedom of choice within a market system, broke with the paternalist strand found in Fabian socialism. Market socialism also broke with mainstream twentieth-century socialism through its non-statist pluralism, its rejection of a strong conception of community and its focus on providing a ‘feasible’ alternative. By the end of the nineties, socialism (and conservatism), as it had been understood for most of the twentieth century, no longer played a significant role in categorizing political debate. Contemporary political discussion takes place within a less clearly mapped political terrain, in which ideas that were often a neglected part of the major political traditions of the twentieth century are being rediscovered and reused in the construction of new arguments—for the most part free from those traditions in which they had been previously located. By the end of the twentieth century ‘feasible socialism’ began to appear more like social liberalism, and liberalism—divided into its social and economic sides—was dominant. The rise and fall of market socialism provides a case study of the much wider collapse in traditional political traditions that structured our understanding of politics during the twentieth century. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Rodney Barker, Marc Lefebvre, Dan Greenwood and Louise Thomas for written comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The paper benefited from the advice of participants at the workshop on ‘Altruism, Ethics and the Market’, Second Annual Conference of Workshops in Political Theory, Manchester Market socialism in retrospect 41 Metropolitan University, 7– 9 September 2005, and LSE’s Political Theory Seminar, 3 November 2005. Errors and shortcomings remain my own. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the ESRC (award number: PTA-030-2003-00029) for its funding of the research of which this article is a part. Notes 1. D. Miller, Market, State and Community: Theoretical Foundations of Market Socialism, Oxford, 1989, p. vii. 2. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, London, 1944, p. 24. 3. Although there were several important exceptions to this generalization, as this article goes on to argue. 4. A useful selection of British market socialist work from the period appears in S. Estrin and J. Le Grand, Market Socialism, Oxford, 1989. 5. The term ‘market socialism’ never enjoyed great popularity in more vernacular socialist writing, and so it is at this fairly abstract level of argument that I examine the concept in this paper. 6. There is a substantial literature on the difficulties which market socialism might face in practice. A brief but useful early summary of some of the problems is found in J. Gray, ‘Marxian Freedom, Individual Liberty and the End of Alienation’, Social Philosophy and Policy, 3(2), 1986, pp. 174– 80. 7. Cf. R. N. Berki, Socialism, London, 1975. That is not to go as far as Mark Bevir and argue that any attempt to describe the core constituents of ideologies is ‘reification’. See, for example, M. Bevir, ‘New Labour: A Study in Ideology’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2000. 8. A. De Jasay provides an example of this kind of approach in Market Socialism: A Scrutiny—‘This Square Circle’, London, 1990. 9. D. Miller, ‘Socialism and the Market’, Political Theory, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1977, p. 473. 10. Miller, Market, State and Community, p. 6. 11. S. Estrin and D. Winter, ‘Planning in a Market Socialist Economy’, in S. Estrin and J. Le Grand (eds), Market Socialism, Oxford, 1989. 12. Miller, Market, State and Community, pp. 6 – 7. 13. See, for example, G. Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four, Harmondsworth, 1949; and S. Webb and B. Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization, 2nd edn, London and New York, 1937. (The first edition of the Webbs’ book tellingly retained a question mark at the end of its subtitle.) 14. See, for example, J. Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, London and New York, 1998. 15. T. Stark, A New A – Z of Income and Wealth, London, 1988. 16. Miller, Market, State and Community, p. 9. 17. See, for example, D. Lipsey, ‘Too Much Choice’, Prospect, No. 117, December 2005; and J. Le Grand, ‘Too Little Choice’, Prospect, No. 118, January 2006. 18. An example is found in D. Reay and H. Lucey, ‘The Limits of “Choice”: Children and Inner City Schooling’, Sociology, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2003. 19. Estrin and Le Grand, Market Socialism. 20. Ibid., p. v. 21. Although the rise of the SDP after 1981 briefly threatened the Labour Party’s role as focal point for hopes of the wider left. 22. D. Miller, ‘The Resurgence of Political Theory’, Political Studies, Vol. 38, No. 3, 1990. 23. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA, 1971. Although harbingers of this resurgence are found in Peter Laslett’s announcement of the revival of political theory as early as 1956 (see P. Laslett (ed.), Philosophy, Politics and Society: A Collection, Oxford, 1956) and it was in 1962 that Rawls’ essay ‘Justice as Fairness’ appeared in the second series of this collection (see J. Rawls, ‘Justice as Fairness’, in P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman (eds), Philosophy, Politics & Society: 2nd Series: A Collection, Oxford, 1962). 24. Miller, ‘Socialism and the Market’, p. 474. 42 Simon Griffiths 25. In particular in Rawls, A Theory of Justice; and in R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Oxford, 1974. 26. Miller, ‘Socialism and the Market’, p. 474. 27. Indeed, the closeness between some interpretations of Rawlsian liberalism and socialist revisionism has been noted; see R. Plant, ‘Crosland, Equality and New Labour’, in D. Leonard (ed.), Crosland and New Labour, Basingstoke, 1999. 28. Including D. Miller, On Nationality, Oxford, 1995; D. Miller and M. Walzer (eds), Pluralism, Justice and Equality, Oxford, 1995; and D. Miller, ‘In What Sense Must Socialism be Communitarian?’, Social Philosophy & Policy, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1989. 29. M. Cowling, The Sources of the New Right: Irony, Geniality and Marice’, Encounter, LXXIII 4, 1989. 30. The term was coined in a Fabian pamphlet by D. Collard, The New Right: a Critique, London 1968. 31. R. Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think Tanks and the Economic Counter-revolution, 1931–1983, London, 1994. 32. Miller, Market, State and Community, p. 2. 33. Estrin and Le Grand, Market Socialism, p. v. 34. D. Miller, ‘Why Markets?’, in S. Estrin and J. Le Grand (eds), Market Socialism, p. 25. 35. In a much more detailed exploration of the concept, John Roemer has identified five waves of market socialism in the twentieth century. Roemer does not include Mill in his account, and breaks the calculation debate into three stages. See J. Roemer, A Future for Socialism, Ch. 4, Cambridge, MA, 1994. 36. J. Gray, ‘John Stuart Mill: The Crisis of Liberalism’, in B. Redhead (ed.), Plato to NATO: Studies in Political Thought, Harmondsworth, 1984, p. 154. 37. Although Lange is typically described as a market socialist, this has been contested— see D. Ramsey Steele, From Marx to Mises: Post-capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation, La Salle, IL, 1992, pp. 154– 7. A useful summary of the calculation debate is found in A. Gamble, Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty, Ch. 3, Cambridge, 1996. 38. Further discussion can be found in S. Estrin, ‘Yugoslavia—The Case of Self-managing Market Socialism’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1991. 39. Discussions of ‘market socialism’ in China can be found in J. Petras, ‘Contradictions of Market Socialism in China 1’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1988; J. Petras, ‘Contradictions of Market Socialism in China 2’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1988; P. Bowles and G. White, ‘The Dilemmas of Market Socialism—CapitalMarket Reform in China 1 Bonds’, Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3, 1992; and P. Bowles and G. White, ‘The Dilemmas of Market Socialism—Capital-Market Reform in China 2 Shares’, Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4, 1992. 40. See J. H. Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market: An Essay in Utopian Politicoeconomic Theory, Chicago, 1980; A. Nove, ‘Market Socialism’, Acta Oeconomica, Vol. 40, Nos 3– 4, 1989; A. Nove, The Economics of Feasible Socialism, London, 1983; C. Pierson, Socialism after Communism: The New Market Socialism, Padstow, Cornwall, 1995; Roemer, A Future for Socialism; J. Roemer, ‘Market Socialism—A Blueprint’, Dissent, Vol. 38, No. 4, 1991. 41. D. Miller and S. Estrin, ‘A Case for Market Socialism—What Does it Mean—Why Should We Favor It?’, Dissent, Vol. 34, No. 3, 1987, pp. 359– 79. 42. Important statements of the argument are to be found in D. Miller, ‘Socialism and the Market’, Political Theory, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1977; Miller and Estrin, ‘A Case for Market Socialism’; Miller, Market, State and Community; and D. Miller, ‘A Vision of Market Socialism— How it Might Work—and its Problems’, Dissent, Vol. 38, No. 3, 1991. 43. Miller, ‘Why Markets?’, p. 30. 44. See, for example, F. A. Hayek, Individualism and the Economic Order, Chicago and London, 1948. 45. Miller, ‘Why Markets?’, p. 32. 46. Ibid., p. 32. 47. Ibid., p. 33. 48. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, pp. 70 – 2. 49. An example of this kind of argument is found in R. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times, Illinois, 1999. Market socialism in retrospect 43 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. Trotsky, quoted in the epigraph to Ch. IX of Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. Miller, Market, State and Community, p. 10. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 327. Ibid., p. 330. Miller, ‘In What Sense Must Socialism be Communitarian?’, p. 54. The claim that British socialist revisionism pre-dates Crosland has recently been made in P. Diamond (ed.), New Labour’s Old Roots: Revisionist Thinkers in Labour’s History 1931– 1997, Exeter, 2004. Crosland’s most important revisionist texts include C. A. R. Crosland, ‘The Transition to Capitalism’, in R. Crossman (ed.), New Fabian Essays, London, 1952; C. A. R. Crosland, The Future of Socialism, London, 1956; and C. A. R. Crosland, Socialism Now, and Other Essays, London, 1974. Miller, Market, State and Community, p. 1. Ibid., p. 321. Miller, ‘In What Sense Must Socialism be Communitarian?’, pp. 52 – 60. Ibid. p. 55. Ibid. See, for example, R. H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society, London, 1921. See T. H. Green, ‘Liberal Legislation and the Freedom of Contract’ (1881), reprinted in D. Miller, Liberty, Oxford, 1991, for an early influential account of this argument in a British context. To Green freedom was ‘a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying’ (my emphasis), p. 21. It is this kind of definition of ‘positive’ freedom that Isaiah Berlin later famously criticized. See I. Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in H. Hardy and R. Hausheer (eds), The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays, London, 1998. H. G. Wells, New Worlds For Old, London, 1908. H. G. Wells, cited in V. Bogdanor, ‘Why Fabianism could not surrive’, New Statesman, 7 August 1998, p. 49. Indeed, Robert Berki has argued that libertarianism is one of the four core components of socialism. See R. N. Berki, Socialism, Ch. 1, London, 1975. G. Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, Harmondsworth, 1982, original 1941, I, ii. Beatrice Webb, quoted in H. Wainwright, Arguments for a New Left: Answering the Free-market Right, Oxford, 1994 p. 109; similar arguments are found in G. Wallas, Human Nature in Politics, London, 1908; and H. G. Wells, New Worlds for Old, London, 1908. D. Jay, The Socialist Case, Ch. 30, London, 1937. Jay’s Times obituarist wrote that this statement was ‘a classic statement of Fabian arrogance and elitism’ and Margaret Thatcher attacked the phrase in her autobiography. The sentence was picked up in the late forties and fifties by the Conservative Party and used in its election propaganda. (The phrase also made it into M. Paris (ed.), Read My Lips: A Treasury of Things Politicians Wish They Hadn’t Said, London, 1997.) However, Richard Toye has argued that Jay’s comment has been taken out of context. Toye concluded that the polemical use of the phrase by his political enemies meant that ‘Jay’s views on economic planning and consumer choice have frequently been misrepresented’. See R. Toye, ‘The Gentleman in Whitehall’ Reconsidered: The Evolution of Douglas Jay’s Views on Economic Planning and Consumer Choice 1937– 1947’, Labour History Review, Vol. 67, No. 2, 2002. R. Barker, Political Ideas in Modern Britain, London and New York, 1997, p. 254. Miller, Market, State and Community. J. Lane, Anti-statist, Communist Manifesto, Sanday, 1978 [1887]. W. Morris, ‘Looking Backward’, in C. Wilmer (ed.), News from Nowhere and Other Writings, Harmondsworth, 1993 [1889], p. 358. Crosland, The Future of Socialism, p. 165. Anarchism is the subject of D. Miller, Anarchism, London, 1984. Kropotkin, in particular, is discussed in D. Miller, ‘The Neglected: 2. Kropotkin’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1983; and D. Miller, ‘Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, 1872– 1886—Cahm, C’, in Times Literary Supplement, 23 March 1990. 44 Simon Griffiths 76. A parallel attempt to revive pluralism on the left was made by Paul Hirst, who explicitly linked his argument for pluralism at the end of the twentieth century with the arguments of earlier twentieth-century pluralist thinkers. See P. Hirst (ed.), The Pluralist Theory of the State, London and New York, 1989, Introduction. For a general account of the pluralist revival see R. Barker, ‘Pluralism, Revenant or Recessive?’, in J. Hayward (ed.), The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century, Oxford, 1999. 77. H. Wainwright, Arguments for a New Left: Answering the Free-market Right, Oxford, 1994, p. 274. 78. D. Miller, ‘Why Markets?’, p. 29. 79. F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, London, 1988, pp. 18 – 19. 80. See A. Pilkington, ‘Cultural Representations and Changing Ethnic Identities in a Global Age’, in M. Holborn (ed.), Developments in Sociology, Ormskirk, 2002. 81. Miller, Market, State and Community, p. 232. A similar argument has made a public reappearance in recent months through the controversy sparked by an article in Prospect Magazine, in which the editor, David Goodhart, argued that there was a trade-off between ethnic diversity and a strong welfare state. See D. Goodhart, ‘Too Diverse? Is Britain Becoming too Diverse to Sustain the Mutual Obligations behind a Good Society and the Welfare State?’, Prospect, February 2004, p. 232. 82. Plant, cited in Miller, Market, State and Community, pp. 231– 2. 83. Ibid., p. 233. 84. Ibid.; and Miller, On Nationality. 85. Miller, Market, State and Community, p. 238. 86. Notable exceptions are George Orwell and Robert Blatchford, who both drew on nationalism as a source of support for their socialist arguments. In particular, see R. Blatchford, Britain for the British, London, 1902; and G. Orwell, ‘Notes on Nationalism’, in G. Orwell (ed.), Essays, Harmondsworth, 1984 [1945]; and G. Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, Harmondsworth, 1982 [1941]. 87. Miller, ‘In What Sense Must Socialism be Communitarian?’, pp. 51 – 52. 88. See, in particular, A. Nove, The Economics of Feasible Socialism, London, 1983. 89. M. Jacobs, ‘Reason to Believe’, Prospect, October 2002. 90. See, for example, K. Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, London, 1945. 91. J. Grahl, ‘Agenda for a New Left: Answering the Free-market Right—Wainwright, H’, New Left Review, No. 214, 1995, p. 152. 92. D. Miller, ‘What Kind of Equality Should the Left Pursue?’, in J. Franklin (ed.), Equality, London, 1997, p. 98. 93. The many contested meanings of ‘market socialism’ make this kind of conceptual search problematic. A prime example concerns many of the more recent articles which use the term ‘market socialism’ to describe the market reforms carried out in China in recent years. These reforms owe little to the British market socialism discussed in this paper. Nor does the graph take into account the selection of journals surveyed or the rise in the number of journals which occurred during the period examined. Furthermore, this kind of search obviously does not include works that include arguments with ideational similarities to market socialism, but that do not use the term. Despite these problems, the exercise provides a useful indication, if no more, of the rise and fall of academic debate on market socialism in recent decades. 94. G. Cohen, ‘The Future of a Disillusion’, New Left Review, No. 190, 1991, p. 15. 95. Miller, ‘In What Sense Must Socialism be Communitarian?’, p. 55. 96. Estrin and Le Grand, Market Socialism. 97. Press Briefing, 10 Downing Street, 20 May 2004, ,http://www.number-10.gov.uk/ output/page5842.asp.. 98. See J. Le Grand, Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens, Oxford, 2003. 99. Even those on the left who were sceptical about globalization, such as Hirst, had to engage in a debate with those who thought globalization a real limit on the left. See P. Hirst and G. Thompson, Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance, Cambridge, 1996. 100. See, for example, A. Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy, Cambridge, 1998.