As a term that indicates the modern socio-economy, the word “market economy,” in place of “capitalism,” became widespread from the 1990s. While “market economy” depicts modern economy as a horizontal relationship among free and equal members, “capitalism” besides implies a vertical relationship especially between capital and labor. Even when we use here the word “market economy,” we refer to “capitalism.”
How to coordinate/regulate the market economy? This is the central question of the French Régulation School. This school, succeeding Marx’s historical, and Keynes’ institutional points of view, approaches the market economy from an analytical angle of “social regulation of capitalism.” This is of course a critique to the auto-regulating view of market by neoclassicals.
The question of social coordination/regulation of capitalism also constituted an original subject of the Japanese thought of civil society, represented by Yoshihiko Uchida. The development of capitalism does not necessarily realize a penetration of the law of value for the labor-force as a commodity. That is, one cannot expect the civil-socialization of the wage-labor nexus on the so-called logic of market alone. After grappling with Kazuo Okochi’s social policy theory, Uchida opened up a viewpoint that a normal development of market requires an institutionalization and coordination/regulation from the side of “society.”
From these reflections, we can point out two principles that consist in the modern socio-economy: market principle and society principle. The two are conflicting and also complementary. A particular market economy is formed by their concrete combinations, and this is why there were/are so many varieties of market economy in the history and in the contemporary world.
