>
>Am I grossly ignorant in seeing a basic, oil-and-water incompatibility
>between socialism and markets?
Not at all, This is a standard objection from the left (many here) and the right (Scott Arnold, Janos Kornai).
What happens when enterprises fail
>in
>market-based socialism -- are the losses socialized in a no-fault way, or
>are the management and workers responsible for the failure punished somehow
>for their lack of smarts and/or effort?
Depends on what you mean by punished. It's hard to be branded a failure, to have your dreams come to nothing, to have to shut down your enterprise. But that is what has to happen if people are not doing their job, or doing it well, or doing a job that needs doing. On the other hand, in a market socialist system, there would be a commitment to full employment, so laid off cooperators would not face homelessness and starvation.
And what about enterprises
>that are
>lucky, clever or dedicated enough to achieve inordinate success -- are
>their
>above-average returns claimed as a public good, or are they retained for
>the
>particular benefit of the management/workers who achieved them?
The latter. It's called an incentive. Of course that's a democratic decision to be made by the legislature, how to set the tax rates, but if all the fruits of luck or talent are taxed away, you might as well not have a market system.
I think socialists have to return to Marx's perspective on this and give up on the bourgeois idea that equality of incomes is important. Marx didn't think so. He was right, too.
jks
>
>Carl
>
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