The Challenge of Market Socialism – Challenges to Market Socialism

The aim of this workshop is to bring market socialism into the focus of political philosophy and to ask whether a just society requires a form of market socialism as its economic system. We want to bring together scholars who support market socialism with scholars who criticize it. The workshop will focus on two quite different attempts to criticize market socialism: On the one hand, many social-liberal authors claim that the less far-reaching alternative to capitalism, a property-owning democracy, is sufficient to ensure justice. On the other side of the spectrum, it is argued that market socialism does not go far enough because it still leaves (too much) room for the market and its harmful effects. The central question for all these discussions is how exactly the relationship between economy and justice is understood. Moreover, it is of decisive importance whether and in what respect the market might have destabilizing effects on the realization of justice.