ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the proposition that the development of the market as the principal means and locus of decision making for the allocation of resources is an essential part of the process of democratization and socialist economic development. It reviews the state of the debate among socialists about the relative roles of the state and market. The chapter discusses conceptions of the workings of markets and their relationship to planning, and concepts of democracy. It analyses the relevance of the foregoing to debates about markets and states in Africa and to arguments about the role of the market mechanism in structural adjustment programmes. The chapter attempts to identify some features of African economies and societies that might form the basis of a collectivist economic and political democracy. Socialism has traditionally been presented as a social and economic system that eliminates the irrationalities of the market and of the processes of accumulation for profit that the market is supposed to represent.
