Whereas many socialists have recently put their faith in market socialism, nineteenth-century socialists were, by contrast, for the most part opposed to market organization of economic life. The mainstream socialist pioneers favored something that they thought would be far superior, to wit, comprehensive central planning, which, it was hoped, could realize the socialist ideal of a truly sharing society. And the pioneers' successors were encouraged by what they interpreted as victories of planning, such as the industrialization of the Soviet Union and the early institution of educational and medical provision in the People's Republic of China. But central planning, at least as practiced in the past, is, we now know, a poor recipe for economic success, at any rate once a society has provided itself with the essentials of a modern productive system.

We have to re-invent socialism. It can’t be the kind of socialism that we saw in the Soviet Union, but it will emerge as we develop new systems that are built on cooperation, not competition.

Planning is to be based on the democratic approach and method. There should, therefore, be definite place for voluntary effort...a substantial advance should be made towards solving the problems of unemployment. At the same a large increase is the supply of consumer goods should be secured through cottage and small scale industries...The Socialist pattern implies a large and growing public sector in the national economy...And economy based on the socialistic pattern does not preclude the existence of a private sector, particularly in agriculture and small scale industries...In the public and private sectors alike, the relations of workers to management should be such as would give to them a distinctive role and a share in the making of decisions affecting the enterprise...In any case, a series of measures will have to be adopted to eliminate speculative and unearned gains...Special attention will have to be given to the elimination of conspicuous consumption...

We propose first to expand credit in order to create demand. That new and greater demand must, of course, be met by a new and greater supply of goods, or all the evils of inflation and price rise will result. Here our Socialist planning must enter in. We must see that more goods are forthcoming to meet the new demand.

The challenge is going to come from Russia. The challenge is not going to come from the United States. The challenge is not going to come from West Germany nor from France. The challenge is going to come from those countries who, however wrong they may be – and I think they are wrong in many fundamental respects – nevertheless are at long last being able to reap the material fruits of economic planning and of public ownership. ... Our main case is and must remain that in a modern complex society it is impossible to get rational order by leaving things to private economic adventure. Therefore I am a Socialist. I believe in public ownership.

To realise that the socialist society is not the norm, evolved by material conditions, but the exception, imposed on immoral society by human will and social conscience, is not to emasculate our socialism, but to set ourselves a challenge.

We started with the illusory hope of ‘improving socialism within the existing system.’ But toward the end of 1986, it had already become clear to me and my associates that renewal could not be achieved by hewing to the old approaches. Upon reflection, we decided to take major steps to reform the system. We chose an evolutionary approach to reforming Soviet society on the principles of freedom, democracy and market economics – which, in effect, amounted to a social-democratic project.

Although market socialist theory will remain seriously incomplete until appropriate theories of bureaucratic, managerial, and worker motivation are developed, market socialism is clearly an alternative to private ownership which must be taken seriously, even if we restrict our view to considerations of efficiency alone.

At the core of the failure of the socialist experiment is not just the lack of property rights. Equally important were the problems arising from lack of incentives and competition, not only in the sphere of economics but also in politics. Even more important perhaps were problems of information. Hayek was right, of course, in emphasizing that the information problems facing a central planner were overwhelming. I am not sure that Hayek fully appreciated the range of information problems. If they were limited to the kinds of information problems that are at the center of the Arrow-Debreu model consumers conveying their preferences to firms, and scarcity values being communicated both to firms and consumers then market socialism would have worked. Lange would have been correct that by using prices, the socialist economy could "solve" the information problem just as well as the market could. But problems of information are broader.

For now, the critical task is to organize activist popular movements to change popular consciousness and understanding, to shape legislation, and to create facts on the ground: worker-owned industries, cooperatives, and other structures of democratic participation. We can learn a great deal from the long and hard struggles for social justice in past years, and we can and must move forward to build on their achievements and to surpass them. Given the urgency of the crises we face, there is no time to lose.

I won't see socialism in my lifetime; I don't know if my son will see it in his, or even my grandchildren in theirs. There is no way to foretell what kind of political developments and issues will galvanize a future generation to turn towards socialism. The model I embraced in my youth, the vision of a vanguard party of the working class seizing power in the midst of a great social and political crisis like the one that had overtaken Russia in 1917, is no longer relevant. But I still believe that working people must be at the center of any real movement for socialism, for they are the majority for whose well-being that government "of, by, and for the people" should be concerned. Ultimately I have faith that people, given the understanding of how they can help bring it about, want to live in a better world. People can change the world, but they can't do it as individuals alone. They have to join with others to do it. One thing I have not changed my views on over the years is the belief that organization is the key to winning victories for social change. That's why it was such a tragedy that so little in the way of organized radicalism survived the collapse of the New Left. (p 252)

Our Party and people are, therefore, faced with extremely urgent and complex problems. The former modes of production must be trans­formed and new economic relations and division of labour introduced. The material-technical base necessary for economic reconstruction must be laid and the cultural level of the people raised so that our country can advance firmly and rapidly along the road to socialism.

Today in America, the overwhelming majority of the people are not ready for socialism, and so socialism is not the issue. We Communists know we can make our greatest contribution to the socialist cause by fighting in common with all the progressive forces in our country for full employment, for equality for all minority peoples, for the complete realization of American democracy, for co-operation with all the United Nations and above all with the great Soviet Union, for post-war stability.

We mustn't fear to adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries (...) The very essence of socialism is the liberation and development of the productive systems (...) Socialism and market economy are not incompatible (...) We should be concerned about right-wing deviations, but most of all, we must be concerned about left-wing deviations.