>> What people really mean when they argue that markets are necessary,
>> or more efficient, is that such an incentive system is necessary, or
>> more efficient, as part of a social economy.
>
> Not exactly. Soviet planners used wage levels as incentives, though I
> suppose some state cap type would say "I told you so" on that news. A
> lot of people who argue that markets are necessary do so because
> planners can't know everything about the present much less the
> future, so some kinds of decentralized adjustment mechanisms are
> necessary. I really don't want to set off another market vs. plan
> debate though.
In so far as it's a question about the organization of instrumental activity in Marx's imagined ideal republic, it's a question of how "universally developed individuals," in Marx's sense, would do this. Such individuals embody Marx's idea of what is involved in thinking and feeling rightly.
Soviet planning isn't relevant because, as we've discussed before, the "individuality" it expresses isn't of this kind. I don't think Hayek on planning is relevant either, i.e. he's not concerned with "individuals" conceived in this way.
Marx characterizes how we would produce if we produced as "human beings," i.e. as universally developed individuals" producing within relations of "mutual recognition," as follows:
“Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have in two ways affirmed himself and the other person. 1) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses and hence a power beyond all doubt. 2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man's essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man's essential nature. 3) I would have been for you the mediator between you and the species, and therefore would become recognised and felt by you yourself as a completion of your own essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love. 4) In the individual expression of my life I would have directly created your expression of your life, and therefore in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realised my true nature, my human nature, my communal nature.
“Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.
“This relationship would moreover be reciprocal; what occurs on my side has also to occur on yours." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/index.htm