Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Market System Ascendant 9seas markets for its entrepreneurs. It collects enormousfunds to disperse through social welfare programs. And it isa powerfully active manager of supplies of money and creditboth through its controls over banking and its own fiscalpolicy.Some of these governmental activities are necessary tomake a market system flourish. Some are at least helpful,some are wasteful. Some represent nothing better thanraids on the public purse. However evaluated, they are partof the story of how market systems work.Although buying and selling may be natural to humankind,market systems are not. They have in fact arisen onlyrecently in history. Also not natural are the complexities ofcorporate law, the abstract shares in ownership calledstocks and bonds, the rituals of collective bargaining. Neithernatural nor God given, market systems are also not allalike. And just as today’s differ from those of fifty years ago,they differ from those the future will bring.One can imagine a market system in which all enterprises,or at least all the large ones, are state owned and operatedas market enterprises. They are market enterprisesbecause their outputs and inputs are decided by marketbuying and selling rather than by governmental command.One can also imagine a co-op market system in which allenterprises are owned by their customers. Another possibilityis ownership and operation by employees. But the nowascendant market system is of course the one that KarlMarx called capitalism, now more often called the privateenterprise system. That is the kind of market system thatwill get most of our attention, but not to the exclusion ofother kinds of market systems and of interesting marketstatehybrids.Movement today to the market system intertwines with