> what distinguishes a market economy from a centrally planned economy
> is that in principle anybody can apply their own individual
> imagination to prevailing prices and come up with ideas for new
> products and processes. And then they can approach any one of a
> large number of potential capital suppliers (banks, venture
> capitalists, rich uncles) to try to finance the idea. This acts as
> an engine for generating and bringing to light new ideas for
> economically feasible technical improvements.
The degree of imaginative creativity characteristic of a particular kind of "individuality" is an expression of that individuality's degree of developed "virtuosity". This in turn expresses the degree to which the social relations productive of the particular kind impede or facilitate such development.
"Socialist planning" would be planning carried out by individuals with the degree of developed virtuosity required to "appropriate" the productive forces developed within capitalist social relations. These forces express the degree of virtuosity able to develop within these relations, relations that are, however, inconsistent with - that "fetter" - full development.
Socialist social relations would be relations from which all "fetters" on individual development had been eliminated; so they would be ultimately productive of an individuality characterized by the greatest possible degree of developed virtuosity and the greatest possible degree of imaginative creativity. This would be the individuality with the greatest capability for developing productive forces.
These ideas (Marx's) have largely disappeared from "Marxism".
As I've pointed out before, however, they are, in important ways, consistent with and explanatory of Keynes's reply to Hayek on "planning".
"I should therefore conclude your theme [Hayek's in The Road to Serfdom] rather differently. I should say that what we want is not no planning, or even less planning. I should say that we almost certainly want more. But the planning should take place in a community in which, as many people as possible, both leaders and followers, share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly orientated in their own minds and hearts to your own moral position. ... Dangerous acts can be done rightly which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly." (Letter to F.A. Hayek, 28 June 1944 in Collected Writings, vol. XXVII, pp. 385-8)
The "planning" characteristic of the USSR and China was not "socialist planning" in Marx's sense. The kind of individuality it expressed was far from the kind of individuality such planning requires. It was the kind expressive of the fetters placed on individual development by the peasant social relations characteristic of pre-revolutionary Russia and China, relations inconsistent with those required for the development of an individuality with the degree of developed virtuosity required for the creation of "socialism" in Marx's sense.
Ted