The contradiction which is classified as the severest one in most Marxist analyses of society is the plan-market opposition. From this, it follows that the social order that will rise from the ashes of capitalism upon the solution of this contradiction must be a centrally planned and, hence, non-market system. The author emphasizes that, instead, the existence of a different contradiction whose solution is compatible with the assumption that the newly emerging production mode, i.e. socialism, will still be a market economy. In the conclusion, the author mentions a seldom-quoted article that Lenin wrote after his experiments with wartime communism and the Nep and in which he spelt out that “cooperation is socialism”.