Theory of Market Socialism, a variety of current anti-Marxist economic thought according to which the socialist economy is a kind of commodity and money economy which operates in conformity with the laws of market competition. It is widespread in bourgeois, reformist, and right-wing revisionist literature. Its ideology and essence can be traced back to: 1) petty-bourgeois Utopianism of the second quarter of the 19th century with its illusory hope of attaining socialist ideals without changing the society of private commodity producers (Socialist Ricardians, Rodbertus, Proudhon); 2) to abstract models of "socialist" economy of the 1930s that emerged in the framework of the neoclassical trend in bourgeois political economy and amounted to attempts at constructing a model of socialist economy by modifying the conventional scheme of free market competition through the use of some elements of a planned economy. The most important theoretical premise of the theory is the identification of rational proportions of production and distribution with those which emerge in an uncontrolled way as a result of the unfettered interaction of supply and demand and uncontrollable price fluctuations. The theory claims that markets of capital and labour power exist under socialism. The market criteria are elevated to the status of the only possible objective criteria of economic activity. The theory employs an atomistic approach to economics, in which the economy is regarded as a sum of individual enterprises. The economic activities of the state and the role of central planning are viewed as a force alien to socialism, and which should be stringently limited. As a result, state ownership of the basic means of production figures in the theory only as a legal form with no real economic content. Market socialism theoreticians employ the concept of the "property of enterprises”. The nature of this property and its models vary according to the given theoretician. In the anarcho-syndicalist variant of market conception, the basic functions of enterprise management (including distribution of the gross income and liabilities for product marketing losses) are assumed by the work collective itself which acts as the actual collective owner of the means of production. In the “managerial” (technocratic) variety, the decisive role in enterprise management and many functions of the real owner are allotted to the professional manager, whose relations with the work force of the enterprise are essentially those of capitalist and hired worker. In current bourgeois literature, the theory of market socialism serves as an initial abstract model which is used in the criticism of real socialism. In reformist and even more so in current right-wing revisionist literature, it is a key element of the economic core of associated anti-Marxist models of socialism. 367 Where the models of market socialism go wrong is that their postulates are divorced from the real conditions and needs of modern production. The development of the productive forces has long since rendered the abstract scheme of free competition well-nigh invalid, and turned this scheme into an atomistic picture of the economic structure of society. The limited power of market regulation mechanisms is especially obvious in the context of the scientific and technological revolution. The logical inconsistence of the theory of market socialism is also explained by the fact that it ignores the basic difference between the socialist economy and the commodity capitalist economy, as is evident when it brings the labour market or collective ownership, which are alien to the theory, into its models.