INTRODUCTION

The collapse of Communism and the retreat from, in theory as well as practice, even moderate forms of collectivism have left even the non–Marxist forms of socialism in disarray. While it is true that forms of collectivism have remarketed themselves under meretricious, insubstantial doctrinal headings such as the “Third Way,” an unstable amalgam of capitalism, communitarianism, and welfarism, there has been little original work on how an economy and society might organize itself so as to have neither the superficially objectionable features of modern capitalism nor the economically untenable and morally odious properties of full-blooded socialism. The former might include vast inequality in resource ownership, the unequal political power such inequality might generate, the increasing alienation produced by the soulless possessive individualism that is allegedly engulfing the world, and a myriad of other complaints that are regularly leveled at capitalism.

Most of these potentially objectionable features of capitalism center around equality and its place in the modern political lexicon. Equality has, of course, always been the Holy Grail of socialism, but even the rival doctrine of liberal capitalism pays more than mere obeisance to some minimal conception of equality–linked justice. It would be an attenuated form of the market that did not recognize equality before the law and in the exchange system. The market, by treating traders as abstract agents not identified by class, sex, or ethnic origin, shows a recognition of that ideal.