Equal Shares

“Nice idea but it doesn’t work in practice.” How often have socialists had this claim thrown back at them? And now after the events of 1989 many of the Left are openly wondering what a defensible idea of socialism would be. This work addresses this question taking as its point of departure John Roemer’s model of “coupon socialism”. Roemer’s model aims to combine the market with a commitment to equality through a simple yet starkly radical proposal: all citizens would receive an equal number of coupons with which to buy ownership rights (voting dividends) in companies. These coupons would constitute a second separate form of currency but could not be exchanged for ordinary money nor transferred to other people. Not all the contributors to this collection endorse Roemer’s working model of market socialism but they are all stimulated by his foray into a “real utopia”.