Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

48 How It Worksrule is so overwhelming, so taken for granted, acquiescenceto it so automatic and unthinking, that we hardly take notethat every transaction that establishes a claim is an implicitwaiver of other potentially troublesome claims.Some of the conflicts apparently resolved by the marketsystem surface again in the form of governmental policyquestions about taxes, pensions, and affirmative action.Problems also arise when people violate the rule of quid proquo by stealing rather than buying—not simply throughstreet crime but in embezzlement and other fraud. Nor doesthe market system cope well with the inextinguishablesmoldering fire of class conflict. And market resolution ofconflicting claims is tightly tied to an inequitable historicaldistribution of property claims, as well as to the distributionof skills among people. Both ties produce a highly inegalitarianoutcome. Nonetheless, the market constitutes aprodigious mechanism for keeping the social peace.The market system is of course not the only possibilityfor keeping peace. Conflicting claims can be resolved bylaw, administrative authority, and other institutions. Evenin predominantly market societies many conflicts are so resolved,ranging from conflicting claims to children by separatedparents to claims for office by competing candidates.Significantly, for all the power of the state, communist systemscould not cope with conflicting claims to objects, performances,and jobs without making use of consumer andlabor markets. The rules and authority of the state, theyfound, were not enough.For Both Cooperation and PeacekeepingSome attributes of market-system coordination, for bothcooperation and peacekeeping, are worth special note.