Market Economy and Socialism

After the fall of Soviet central planning, the transition to a market economy has been regarded as the main alternative strategy for the economic restructuring of those societies. China is also restructuring its economy toward a socialist market economy, though politically the Chinese Communist Party still holds power. Does this restructuring of socialist economies mean that, after all, it is impossible for a socialist planned economy to exist without relying on a market? Can a socialist economy form a rational and dynamic economic system which would replace and surpass the market economy? The issue of how to understand the relationship between the market and socialism, has reappeared as a crucial theoretical problem for the future of socialism.