Markets and Social Structures: Distinguishing between different Market Societies - Part I (a)

A brief question and a quick answer, while we wait for Part II of the Market and Social Structures blog post to come out.

How do we distinguish between different market societies, if all that matters as far as the economics approach of mainstream economics is concerned, is the market aspect of a society?

Well, you can't really, since under that perspective there's nothing to distinguish these types of societies if they're all market societies. A market society is a market society. That's a tautology!

Since this is the case, you have to turn to the sociological or political economy perspective of non-mainstream economics (like Marx's) as this focuses on the underlying social structure aspects of the different types of market societies. For what principally distinguishes a capitalist market society from a socialist market society is their different social structures. It's all to do with the adjectives (capitalist and socialist) rather than the nouns (market society).

In the case of a capitalist market society, its distinguishing social structure is the capital/wage-labour social relation of production, ie, a social structure in which the capitalist class own and control the means of production while the class of wage-workers don't and consequently have to sell their labour-power to the capitalist class for a wage, which results in them being made to work for the financial benefits of their capitalist employers (in the form of profits). While, in the case of a socialist market society, it will be its workers-managed cooperative social relations of production, ie, a social situation in which different groups of 'workers' or 'producers' own and manage their own respective workers-cooperative firms and as a result do not work for any 'employers' and also get to keep and distribute the 'profits' amongst themselves. (Nb. I'm deliberately keeping it very simple here, but see David Schweickart's work for detail elaborations on the nature of the 'social relations' of a socialist market society.)

So, while a capitalist market society and a socialist market society are both market societies in that both types of societies have markets or have a market system (in the sense that markets are essentially places or sites in which things are exchanged for money), they're not the same in terms of their respective social structures. A capitalist market society operates on a different basis to the socialist market society. The former does so on the basis of its capitalist social structure, which (for a Marx) turns out to be both an oppressive and exploitative one for wage-workers, while the latter does so on the basis of its socialist social structure, which (for a Schweickart) turns out to be a non-oppressive and non-exploitative one for the owner-workers.

So, if we overlook these essential differences in the respective social structures of capitalist and socialist market societies, then we will fail to properly distinguish between them as specific types of market societies. Consequently, they will all simply be called market societies - minus any adjectives to distinguish them.

An analogy might help here. In the science of taxonomy and systematics (natural history), scientists like biologists and zoologists seek to distinguish between different groups of animals and plants according to their general and specific features. This allows them to properly distinguish between different species of animals or plants while all belonging to the same genus. For example, on the basis of this taxonomic or classificatory method, they can distinguish between two species of the genus Panthera (large cats): the leo species (lion) and the tigris species (tiger). Thus, on this basis, we learn to recognise how these two species are essentially different from each other (they are different types of large cats) but also what they have in common with one another (they are both large cats).

So, similarly, if we are to clearly distinguish between two 'species' of the 'genus' of Market Societies, then, in order to do that, we need to focus on their specific differences, which happens to be their respective underlying social structures: their capitalist and socialist social structures. Thus, to complete this analogy, we have the capitalist species of the genus Market Societies and the socialist species of the genus Market Societies. So, if we were to be taxonomically precise here, we would say, respectively: Market Society capitalist and Market Society socialist. This consequently allows us to recognise what they each have in common with one another (they have markets) as well as how they essentially differ from each other (they have different social structures).