Raymond Plant and market socialism

Book section : Chapter

Raymond Plant was a democratic socialist who was deeply engaged with the neoliberal political philosophies that came to prominence through the work of Friedman, Hayek, Nozick, and others. Plant contrasted the way that values such as liberty and justice were understood by neoliberals with the way that they had been understood in the democratic socialist tradition. But he also had to position himself in relation to the market socialist ideas that had been developed in the 1980s by political philosophers looking for an alternative to moribund state socialism, which overlapped in certain respects with those of the neoliberals. Plant’s response was to acknowledge that a feasible and liberty-preserving form of socialism had to embrace the market as one of the components of a good society. My contribution will present and evaluate Plant’s response to market socialism, contrasting it with the responses evoked in other socialists such as Jerry Cohen.

Authors: Miller, D

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Host title: The Idea of the Good Society: Essays in Honour of Raymond Plant
• Pages: 134-147
• Chapter number: 10
• Place of publication: Oxford / New York
• Publication date: 2025-05-14
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.1093/9780191983627.003.0010
• EISBN: 9780191983627
• ISBN-10: 019887250X
• ISBN-13: 9780198872481
• Language: English
• Keywords: Raymond Plant; Market Socialism; Labour Party; neoliberalism; liberty
• Subtype: Chapter