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BACKWARDS INTO THE FUTURE: NEOREPUBLICANISM AS A POSTSOCIALIST CRITIQUE OF MARKET SOCIETY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2002

Gerald F. Gaus
Gerald F. Gaus
Affiliation:
Philosophy and Murphy Institute, Tulane University
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Extract

Socialism, understood as the rejection of markets based on private property in favor of comprehensive centralized economic planning, is no longer a serious political option. If the core of capitalism is the organization of the economy primarily through market competition based on private property, then capitalism has certainly defeated socialism. Markets have been accepted—and central planning abandoned—throughout most of the Third World and in most of the formerly Communist states. In the advanced industrial states of the West, Labor and “democratic socialist” parties have rejected socialism, by deregulating markets and privatizing industries, utilities, and transport. The U.K. Labour Party's 1945 manifesto declared the party to be a “Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate aim is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.” Today the Labour Party insists that markets are a given.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 2003 , pp. 59 - 91
Copyright
© 2003 Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation

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